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THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/christianfaithseOOunse 


. THE 
CHRISTIAN FAITH 


A SERIES OF ESSAYS FOR THE USE OF 

PARENTS AND TEACHERS WRITTEN AT 

THE INSTANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN 
EVIDENCE SOCIETY 


EDITED BY 


vee 
Bate NOUCULOTH MAND Torr 


HON. FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD 3 
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER 


LONDON 
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
1922 


PREFACE 


THE series of essays contained in this volume 
has been written at the request of the Committee 
of the Christian Evidence Society.* 

That Society exists, according to its sub-title, 
“for the study, proclamation, and defence of 
Christian Truth.” It works on inter-denomina- 
tional lines, for it deals with the fundamental 
verities of our religion. It is perhaps best known 
through the addresses which are given, both by 
clergy and laymen throughout the year, from 
platforms in the parks and open spaces of London. 

The Society is also largely occupied in dealing 
with the requirements of people of good educa- 
tion. Courses of lectures are given in churches 
and colleges in London and other great towns. 
Certain classes of people who have special diffi- 
culties to meet, or responsibilities to bear, are 
considered. Thus, in the present volume, the 
help and guidance of parents and teachers in the 
religious instruction of their children or pupils 
is the object in view. 

* Offices: 33 and 34, Craven Street, Strand, W.C. 2. 
Hon. Secretary, the Rev. C. L. Drawbridge, M.A. 


v 


vi PREFACE 


The authors of the following essays have 
written independently of one another. ‘There 
has been no previous conference for the exchange 
of thought. Each writer is responsible for what 
is contained in his own contribution, and for 
that alone. The subjects treated are thus 
regarded from different points of view. But it 
is believed that, although the writers occasionally 
differ in their way of dealing with matters of 
some importance, the consistency of the book 
as a whole does not suffer, while it gains im 
directness of treatment, everyone feeling un- 
trammelled by consideration of the opinions of 
his fellow-essayists. 

One result of the stress and strain of recent 
years has been to draw increased attention to the 
need of soundness of method in the education of 
boys and girls in all classes of the community. 

In no department of teaching is the use of right 
method more desirable than in that of religion. 

Two chief factors in the making of a good 
teacher are adequate knowledge of the subject 
and the gift of imparting it in such a way as to 
ensure its reception by the pupil. 

There is also the factor of personal influence— 
that indefinable force which lays hold of the 
impulses and the will of another and bends them 
in the desired direction. It was this gift that, 
more than anything else, was the secret of Dr. 


PREFACE Vl 


Arnold’s power at Rugby. When the Provost 
of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, wrote to the trustees of 
the school in support of Arnold’s candidature 
for the headmastership, he said that, if Arnold 
were appointed, he would “change the face of 
education all through the public schools of 
England.” This remarkable forecast was liter- 
ally fulfilled. The beginning of a more rational 
system in the training of boys dates from 
Arnold’s appointment, however slowly it was 
destined to prevail in the country generally. 
Education was seen to be not so much the im- 
parting of certain items of knowledge, or even 
the conveying of sound principles of thought. 
Rather it meant the drawing out of the pupil's 
latent powers, inviting the exercise of his own 
resources, stirring up whatever gift was in him. 

But the improvement of method in education 
has reacted upon the parent, with the result that, 
in many cases, too much is left to the teacher, 
and the parent’s sense of personal responsibility 
is weakened. There is a feeling that it is the 
teacher’s business. The call of work or pleasure 
is more and more withdrawing from children the 
direct solicitude and care of the parent, with 
much loss to both. For, after all, the natural 
guide and mentor is the parent, and there 1s much 
in the spiritual and moral training of the young 
which no one else can do so well. 


Vill PREFACE 


One aim of these essays is to provide guidance 
and help for parents who are alive to their duty; 
who, while necessarily leaving much to the 
teacher in the way of definite and systematic 
instruction, feel that there is much which they 
cannot leave, but in which they must themselves 
take part if they are to be true to their parental 
vocation. 

Then, as regards the teacher. It is the aim 
of the present volume to suggest what, in the 
opinion of the writers, are the right points of 
view from which he should regard the subject- 
matter of his religious teaching. His task has 
its own special difficulties. The personal element 
is far more in evidence than in other branches of 
education. Force of character, strength of con- 
viction, sincerity of feeling—or their absence— 
tell here, as nowhere else in the whole field of 
instruction. If the spiritual element is all- 
important, the subject-matter of the teaching is 
hardly less so. It matters greatly that children 
should be so taught the facts and truths of religion 
that, however widely their outlook is extended 
when they grow up, they may not have to unlearn 
what they were taught when young. While they 
are encouraged to prove as far as possible out of 
their own life the truth of what they are taught, 
nothing should be presented to them which has 
not stood the test of time and experience. It is 


PREFACE 1X 


no occasion for mere experiment, for airing new 
ideas. Freshness of thought is eminently desir- 
able; but it must not be at the cost of accuracy 
in substance and expression. A capable teacher 
will keep his mind always open to new light. 
But he will teach what has been proved by an 
experience wider than his own. The Christian 
Faith, as it passes down succeeding generations, 
receives fresh illustration from new sources of 
knowledge. But, in itself, it does not change. 
What it needs is restatement in view of the 
requirements of a changing time, fresh inter- 
pretation to meet the new questionings that arise 
in an altered world and in social conditions 
unknown before. 

The majority of the following essays are by 
acknowledged masters of their subject. It is 
hoped that the book will be both a help and 
an encouragement to those who are entrusted 
with the sacred task of instructing our boys and 
girls in the knowledge and the practice of the 
Christian Faith. 

Cao N-. 


OXFORD, 
April, 1922. 


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CONTENTS 


PREFACE . - - - - Page v 


i 
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


By CLEMENT C. J Wesp, M.A., 


Hon. LL.D. (St. Andrews); Oriel Professor of the Philosophy 
of the Christian Religion in the University of Oxford; 
Fellow of Magdalen College. 


Philosophy a characteristic human interest. Religion pre- 
cedes Philosophy, and is concerned with the same object. Hence 
tension between them is inevitable, and this must be allowed for 
in the terms upon which alone they can live together. Neither 
can ultimately take the place of the other, and both are necessary 
to human life as a whole. 


The philosophical difficulties special to Christianity distinguish 
it as a peculiarly philosophical religion. Its relations with 
Philosophy throughout its history have been intimate, and its 
services to Philosophy great, both in insisting on features of 
experience which Philosophy has been tempted to neglect, and 
in calling particular attention to problems of general philo- 
sophical interest. But Christianity must not be regarded as im- 
posing any special philosophy upon its adherents, or as forbidding 
them to explore the possibilities of any line of thought whatever. 


The paper closes with some practical suggestions as to the 
right way of dealing with the o geeious perpen iy of children 
and young persons” - ~~ Paget 


xi 


Xu CONTENTS 


Il 
THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


By H. U. WEITsREcuT STANTON, og UROL 955 4 


Warden of St. Catherine’s House, Highbury; Commissary to 
the Bishop of Lahore. 


Investigation of world religions and rise of Comparative Science 
of Religion. Progress in research enables us to view religion as 
a whole in its essential unity. Is this consistent with the 
uniqueness of Christianity? To answer this, consider the 
origin, process, and aim of religion. 


1 The Origin of Religion.—(a) Supposed by some to be discover- 
able in the most primitive forms of religion known as Animism, 
a dim idea of a soul in men and things leading to propitiation of 
ghosts and spirits, and on a higher stage to worship of ancestors 
and powers of nature. (6) Among animists also a belief in a 
Supreme Being general, but He is remote and harmless, and 
religious observance is devoted to propitiation of malign beings, 
a sign rather of deterioration from a nobler ideal than of progress 
to a higher. (c) Sacrifice and sacrificial feasts in Animism offer 
partial analogies to Christian rites. But these analogies are 
rightly understood, not from the embryonic stage, but from 
that of maturity, as a reaching out of the human soul to the 
adequate revelation of God and communication of His life. 


2. The Process of Religion.—No classification of religions 
accurately fits the growth of every one. Apply this to the widely 
spread theory of evolution as explaining religious development. 
(a) Supposed to depend on heredity and environment, therefore 
each several religion best suited to the stage of development of 
its professors. Why try to change it? (b) The religious 
demands of conscience regarded as themselves the product of 
evolution, adapting conduct to the needs of society; good =pro- 
social, bad =anti-social: radical disturbance of the balance 
injurious. (c) Evolution not a force which governs things, but 
a theory which tries to explain them. To be tested by facts. 
Religion in many cases develops contrary to environment or 
heredity. (d) Conscience is the persistent demand of the soul for 
a supreme standard of moral values which on occasion overrides 
purely social values. Contrariety to that supreme standard is 
sin, and the deliverance from this universal defect is universally 
applicable, 


CONTENTS xi 


3. The Aim of Religion —Common idea that belief matters 
little if conduct is decent, or that the crude popular religions all 
lead up to the one absolute religion. But different religions 
clearly give very different ideas of God, and therefore different 
conceptions of the moral standard of perfection. To be like 
God is the supreme aim of religion. That depends on the facts 
of His self-revelation in Christ which are to be truly apprehended, 
whole-heartedly embodied in life, and proclaimed to the world 

Page 24 


III 
THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
By W. M. Bzxz, B.D. (Lond.). 


The conflict between religion and science still survives among 
the masses; religion is still defended by antiquated arguments, 
and misunderstanding is caused by Bible teaching being separated 
from definite Christian teaching. 


Wrong Methods of dealing with the Situation. 
(a) Separation of scriptural and scientific knowledge is at- 
tempted, but is impossible in practice. 
(b) “‘ Reconciliation ” of discrepancies between the Bible and 
science has been tried after the old manner of reconciling all 
discordant passages in Scripture itself, and is equally impossible. 


General Principles. 

1. Purpose of the Bible.—It is a religious book not meant to 
teach science, but religion. St. Paul’s view of its purpose. 

2. The Nature of Inspiration.—The sacred writers, inspired to 
see truth about God, were not rendered incapable of error—e.g., 
Amos proclaimed a grand religious truth, but was mistaken 
in secular matters. 

3. The Bible the Record of a Revelation.—Its stages sum- 
marized. 

Particular Cases. 

(a) The Creation Story—Its religious message and how to 
teach it in conformity with science. 4 

(b) Jonah.—The religious value of the story aS a missionary 
lesson. 

The idea of the Bible as the record of a revelation is in accord- 
ance with the humble origin of man as taught by science. 
These views not repugnant to Church tradition Page 45 


XIV CONTENTS 


IV 
THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
By R. H.” Kenner, Dabs 


Canon of Ely; Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University 
of Cambridge; Fellow of Queen’s College. 


Our Lord’s attitude towards the Old Testament in relation to— 
(1) History; (2) morality; (3) ritual; (4) theology; (5) national 
hopes. 


Futility of attempting to maintain the doctrine of the iner- 
rancy of all Scripture. 


In order to undeistand the Old Testament, a study of the 
history of the Israelite people is of primary importance. 


The stories of the earliest reputed ancestors of Israel are 
coloured by Canaanite tradition. 


The tradition of the time of Moses preserved by the great 


pre-exilic prophets differs from the account contained in the 
Pentateuch. 


The pre-exilic prophets deny that sacrifice was offered during 
the sojourn in the wilderness. 


Moses himself and those born during his leadership are said to 
have been uncircumcised. 


The great prophets were monotheists and apparently mono- 
gamists. 


The conquest of Palestine; fusion of Israelites and Canaanites. 

Characteristics of Canaanite religion. 

Successive attempts to purge the religion of Jehovah from the 
worst Canaanite elements which had become associated with it. 


The present value of the Old Testament, not only as containing 


a record of an age-long struggle to separate the true from the false, 
but also for its example in faith and in worship. 


Parabolic use of Old Testament stories. 


A study of the Old Testament necessary in order to understand 
the idiom of the New Testament - - - Page 60 


CONTENTS XV 


Vv 
THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


By R. WexBB-OpDELL, B.A., 
Vicar of St. John the Baptist, Enfield. 


The fact of the Resurrection to be distinguished from the 
details of its record. 

The Church’s belief in the Resurrection primitive, universal, 
empowering. “* Delusion theories” pessimistic, inadequate, and 
based upon an obsolete science. That Christ really rose the only 
rational solution of the problem of Christian origins. 

This the central evidence for the faith. 

Other evidences for which sceptics have to account. 

1. The Jesus of the evangelic history. 

He is— 

(a) Living. 

(>) Inexplicable. 

(c) Sinless. 

(d) In, yet not of, His age. 

(e) Inclusive of all perfection. 


Either “unlearned and ignorant men ”’ have accomplished a 
literary miracle or the Gospel story is substantially true. 
2. The witness of the Saints through the centuries. 
They witness to a power— 
(a) Uniform. 
(b) Objective. 
(c) Transforming. 
(2d) Open to all. 


Personal inexperience of this power no argument against its 
existence. 


3. The evidence from the Church’s history. 


(a) It survived the fall of Jerusalem, the postponement of 
the end, the break-up of the Empire, the schisms in the East 
and West. 

(6) It has assimilated the new learning. 

(c) It has been the unique agency for social reform. 

(d) It alone presents an ecumenical faith. 

Yet it springs from a Galilean peasant. 


4. The evidence from Christian doctrine and modern thought. 


(a) “‘ Repugnance to reality,” and the Fall. 


(>) Pain and the goodness of creation; pain and sin; pain 
and the Cross. 


Xvl CONTENTS 


(c) The unknowable God of physical science, and the known 
Christ. 

(d) God, revealed as Trinity, is love, is a social unity, is in 
man. 


Modern needs anticipated in the Gospel. 
The burden of proof on those who oppose, not on those who 
hold, the historic Faith - . . - Page 91 


VI 
THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


By Artuur S” Peaks, M.A., D.D., 


Hon. D.D., Oxford and Aberdeen; Rylands Professor of Biblical 
Exegesis in the University of Manchester; formerly Fellow 
of Merton College. 


Christianity is inseparably associated with history. If the 
Gospels were demonstrated to be entirely fictitious they would 
retain much value, but Christianity could not survive the demon- 
stration. The alliance with history must be accepted, though 
it creates grave difficulties. Principles which must guide our 
investigation. The historicity of Jesus may be proved without 
appeal to the Christian documents. Since the Jewish law 
affirmed crucifixion to be an accursed death, the story of a cruci- 
fied Messiah cannot have been invented. Hence such an 
abnormal development of Jewish Messianic dogma can be ex- 
plained only by the actual crucifixion of a man whom His fol- 
lowers regarded as Messiah. Their belief must have been formed 
in His lifetime with His knowledge and approval. We have 
documentary evidence, both non-Christian, especially Tacitus, 
and Christian, for Jesus as the Founder of Christianity and His 
execution. The Christian records are entitled to a hearing with 
all proper precautions. Generally accepted results in the criti- 
cism of the Pauline Epistles and the Synoptic Gospels. 
Features in the Gospels which cannot have been invented. 
The question of miracles. We cannot settle the problem without 
reference to the Person of whom they are recorded. Forces 
which tended to modify the strict accuracy of the Gospel record. 
The Gospels give us what it is vital for us to know—a vivid con- 
ception of the Personality of Jesus, a trustworthy account of 
His teaching, a knowledge of the critical events. The first of 
these is of supreme importance. The “ eschatological theory ” 
gives a very one-sided view. The problem of “ Jesus and 
Paul”: Did the Apostle fatally pervert the simple theology and 
ethic of Jesus into a mythology? He could not, in face of the 
denial of his right to represent Christianity, have failed to famil- 


CONTENTS XV1l 


iarize himself with the teaching of Jesus, and his Christology 
created no controversy in the Church. Nor need we argue 
that the primitive Christians applied to Jesus a pre-Christian 
Messianic dogma. Jesus believed Himself to be the Messiah, 
the pre-existent Son of Man, the suffering Servant of Yahweh, 
to stand above angels and men in a unique relation to God. 
His consciousness of the nature of His Personality and mission 
is decisive for us, and finds confirmation in the presentation of 
Him in the Gospels and in the experience of His followers 

Page 115 


VII 
JESUS CHRIST 


By C. F.“Nornora, M.A., D.Litt., 
Hon. Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford; Examining Chaplain to 
the Bishop of Rochester. 


The question of the crowd on Christ’s entry to Jerusalem 
one of identity, “‘ Who is this?” Does the answer then given 
still suffice ? 

Growth in apprehension of Christ gradual. 

We have to enquire: 

1. What Christ said about Himself. 

2. What His followers thought about Him. 

1. He accepted the title of Messiah when applied to Him, 
but preferred to speak of Himself as Son of Man. 

It is certain that He regarded Himself as ‘‘ the Son of God ” 
in a special sense. 

His consciousness of Sonship was shown in various ways: 
(a) Full knowledge of the Father; (6) infallibility in divine 
things; (c) the assumptions which pervade His teaching; (d) His 
claim of sinlessness; (e) Unique self-assertiveness. 

History has sanctioned His claim. Existence of the Church 
proves its acceptance of it, not on the ground of His teaching 
merely. Influence of the Cross and the Resurrection. 

2. Perception of the disciples. The Gospel of the Apostolic 
Church was from the first the Gospel of a divine Saviour. 
St. Peter's preaching, St. Paul, St. John. 

The Personality of Christ divine. His true humanity. 
The reconciliation of what seemed incompatible not attempted 
by the primitive Church. ; 

Faith and experience came first. Theology, as a body of 
reasoned knowledge, followed. 

Present-day conditions. Certainty - - Page 139 

2 


XV1ll CONTENTS 


Vill 
THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


By Percy GARDNER, D.Litt., 


Professor of Classical Archeology in the University of Oxford; 
Fellow of the British Academy; Corresponding Member of 
the Institute of France and of the Academies of Sciences of 


Prussia and Gottingen. 


The foundation of ethics laid down by Christ: first, love of 
God; and second, love of man. Both principles to be found 
in the Old Testament in essence, but raised to a new level in the 
New. The fresh revelation of God’s love. The love of God 
as applied to the modern world opposed to secularity. The 
latter believes in the reformation of life by action from without, 
and the promotion of comfort; the former teaches that life 
develops from within, and urges the transmuting of society by 
ideals. The love of God may really be present where God is 
not recognized. Often men give out trivial reasons for conduct 
which is really inspired by higher motives. 


In the earliest Christianity no code of morals; only principles. 
But the working of the spirit of Christ soon produced a visible 
society and a code for conduct. The first great organizer of 
Christian ethics was St. Paul, who carried on his Master’s work. 
Sometimes, however, St. Paul misled by temporary conditions. 
At the Reformation most of the Catholic ethics preserved. 
Modern attempts to supersede it have been negative, and their 
success only momentary. 


Modern attempt to go back to the letter of the Sermon on the 
Mount not self-consistent nor compatible with organized society. 
Need rather for an adaptation of it to permanent conditions. 
It has to be taken in conjunction with the precept to judge 
beliefs by their fruits. Itis chiefly in the estimate of values that 
modern Christianity differs from materialist Utilitarianism. 


The reckless hunt for wealth of the last century has brought its 
natural consequence in envy and jealousy, the clash of classes, 
and hatred between nations. Itis tempting to try hasty remedies, 
but the permanent remedy can only be found in kindliness 
combined with wise consideration of the results of action. There 
is also discontent with Christian ethics, especially in questions 
of sex, but here also reckless experiments may be fatal; the only 
hope lies in a combination of a Christian heart with a scientific 
mind - - - - . - Page 161 


CONTENTS X1x 


IX 
CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


By Hastinas’ RASHDALt, D.D., D.Litt., D.C.L., LL.D., 


Dean of Carlisle; Fellow of the British Academy; Hon. Fellow 
(late Fellow and Tutor) of New College, Oxford. 


Christian morality not the arbitrary commandment of God: 
authority of conscience. 


Necessity of development in the details of morality implied 
by the promise of the Holy Spirit. 


The two great commandments. 
Christ’s teaching not reducible to bare rules. 


Reply to objections commonly urged against the Christian 
law in its application to modern social life. 


1. Non-resistance, forgiveness, punishment. 
2. The lawfulness of war. 
3. The question of property. 


Modern experience requires the recognition of new duties but 
no change of principle. 


Seeley on the need of such development: defects of con- 
ventional Christian morality. 


4, Christianity and socialism. 
5. Christianity and culture. 


Too little recognition of the claims of art and science, learning 
and the pursuit of truth in the conventional Christian ideal: 
need of development in this direction. 


Pursuit of truth and beauty parts of the Christian ideal as 
well as love - . - - : - Page 185 


XX CONTENTS 


x 


MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: ITS BEARING ON 
RELIGIOUS TEACHING 


By E. W.’Barnus, So.D., F-R.S., 


Formerly Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge; 
Canon of Westminster. 


Psychology—the analysis of the working of the human mind— 
its limitations—will not solve metaphysical problems. Modern 
psychology based upon experiment; the danger of argument 
from particular types of mental pathology; theories, to be 
adequate, must completely explain observed facts. The un- 
conscious mind and its nature; reasons for accepting belief in 
its existence. Psychological determinism and its inadequacy. 
Psychology and divine influence—grace. The unconscious 
mind suggested as the region where we make contact with the 
Holy Spirit. Answer to objections to this view. The consciousness 
of our Lord. Sin and regeneration; confession and forgiveness. 
Psychology and sacramental grace. The religious value of sug- 
gestion. Revivals and mental ill-health. The danger to 
theology of the religious use of suggestion. Psychology and 
the Eucharist. Types of religious devotion to be tested by 
their fruits. Tension in the religious life a source of energy. 
Dr. Rivers on subconscious instability - - Page 216 


XI 
CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


By E. W. Warson, Te 


Canon of Christ Church; Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History in the University of Oxford. 


Christianity a leaven. It is conditioned by the state of suc- 
cessive generations. Christians from the first shared the quali- 
ties of their contemporaries. This was the case in the age of the 


CONTENTS XXl 


Fathers. Increasing ignorance affected Christian thought-— 
e.g., in the fallacy of a Golden Age in the past. So with the 
influence of philosophy, as in the debt of St. Augustine to 
Plotinus. Also with Roman law. Yet the Middle Ages, with 
all their credulity, and because of their peculiarities, produce 
high types of Christian character. It is impossible to detach 
Christianity from the age in which it is exemplified. Has 
progress been continuous? ‘The evidence is inconclusive, but 
suffices to show that such failure as there has been was not due 
to Christianity itself. Successive generations vary; change 
comes by reaction. Hence waves of religion; we are in the 
trough of one of them. Hence a tendency to despond. Hannah 
More and Bishop Butler. This largely subjective, and the 
penalty for previous elation. There is no real failure, but there 
is a trial for faith - : - - - Page 240 


THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 


I 


RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
By CLEMENT C. J. WEBB, M.A. 


Man is distinguished from the other animals by 
a concern which we are probably safe in saying 
that none of them shares with him, a concern 
with that which underlies, or lies behind, or 
includes within its embrace (we may use which- 
ever metaphor we please) himself and all the 
many things around him and all that is done 
by, or to, himself or them. Preoccupied as he 
often—most often—is with the affair of the 
moment, he sometimes turns aside to ask, What 
does it all mean? Whatever befalls him, 
whether it be good or ill, is seldom or never 
more than just this—it is always an instalment, 
so to say, of some fate to which he can set no 
limits: it increases or decreases the quantity 
of good or ill, not only in his life but in the world. 
He “‘ looks before and after,” and to his capacity 
for doing so his pleasures and his pains alike 
owe their keenest poignancy. 

Now Philosophy is nothing else than the 

1 


2 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


deliberate effort to think about this characteristic 
object of human interest, about this background, 
this inner significance, this underlying essence of 
all our experiences, actual or possible. But 
before men set themselves deliberately to think 
about the problem of the ultimate meaning and 
nature of the world of which they find themselves 
a part, they express in what they call Religion 
their sense of being part of such a world, their 
apprehension that it has a meaning, and their 
hope that it may mean them well. For to recog- 
nize any object, however insignificant it seem 
to us, though it be the “wood and stone ” 
of the missionary hymn, as a sacred object, is to 
treat it as somehow containing in itself the secret 
at the heart of things which gives them influence 
over us, and makes it possible for us to enter 
into relations with them and perhaps to control 
them in our favour. 

Thus Philosophy is from the first concerned 
with the same object as Religion, although its 
interest in it is, as compared with that of Re- 
ligion, what we may call for the moment an 
abstract and scientific rather than a personal and 
practical interest. But, as we might expect from 
this distinction, Religion precedes Philosophy, 
certainly in the life of human societies and 
commonly also in the life of individual philo- 


CONFLICT 3 


sophers; and thus, when Philosophy comes to 
occupy itself with the problem of the ultimate 
nature of the world of which we are a part, it 
generally finds Religion already in the field 
with practices intended to make favourable to 
us the powers which control the course of this 
world, and with theories designed to explain and 
justify these practices. Now this can hardly 
fail to lead to conflict between Philosophy and 
Religion. For, when men come to ask them- 
selves what it is that they are aiming at in their 
philosophizing, they find that it is something 
which they can only hope to attain on one con- 
dition. This condition is that they take nothing 
for granted, and admit nothing to be true without 
first testing and examining it for themselves. 
Thus Philosophy is bound, by the very nature 
of the desires which it comes into being in order 
to satisfy, to take up an attitude of independence 
towards the religious tradition which it finds in 
possession, whether that tradition embodies 
merely the feelings and speculations about the 
encompassing mystery of the world of men at a 
stage of intellectual development earlier than 
that at which Philosophy arises, or, as often 
happens among civilized peoples, includes also 
the results of previous philosophizing on the 
subject; and this inevitable and_ legitimate 
attitude of independence may, as the experience 


4 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


of mankind abundantly shows, pass into an 
attitude of hostility. 

This is especially likely to happen if the 
representatives of religious tradition, whether 
in the community or in a particular family or 
place of education, take up on their side a re- 
pressive attitude towards the newly-awakened 
activity of the intelligence which is seeking to 
comprehend its experience as a whole—that is, 
to philosophize; if, instead of welcoming this 
as just that special kind of service which the 
intellect has to offer to God, they deny the claim 
of the intellect to leave no part of experience 
uninvestigated and to ascertain as far as 
possible, in the case of every part of that ex- 
perience, the nature of its relation to the rest. 

But, even where there is no such hostile 
attitude taken up towards Philosophy by the 
representatives of religious tradition, it is 
inevitable that there should be tension between 
Religion and Philosophy. Nor, indeed, ought 
we to desire that, in the case of those to whom 
the problems of Philosophy present themselves 
as real problems at all, it should be otherwise. 
To every well-instructed Christian, at any rate, 
it should appear as natural enough that there 
should be appointed to all men a night of 
wrestling with God, a Way of the Cross, which 
may sometimes culminate, as with our Master 


PHILOSOPHIC DOUBT 5 


Himself, in the supreme trial of the withdrawal 
from the soul of the consciousness of God’s 
Presence. Now there are those for whom this 
night of wrestling with God, this Way of the 
Cross, this hiding of God’s face, takes the form 
of philosophic doubt. It is not possible, nor is 
it really to be desired, that some apologetic 
device should be found which would exempt 
Christians altogether from such trials. There is 
room, indeed, for what are called apologetics, 
just as there is for institutions to aid men in 
resisting the temptations of the flesh which all 
or most men must face in the course of their 
spiritual warfare. But we must not look for 
victory in this warfare without battles. The 
strain on religious faith which is involved in 
philosophic thought is as much in the order of 
the day—although fewer, no doubt, are called 
upon to face it—as is the strain on moral 
obedience involved in the natural development 
of our instinctive bodily appetites. 

There is, however, an important distinction 
between the two kinds of strain which I have 
just compared. It belongs to the very nature 
of our moral consciousness that the law of 
Duty presents itself to us as invested, in Butler’s 
celebrated phrase, with a “ manifest authority ” 
to which the appetites, urgent and absorbing as 
they may be, lay no claim. But Philosophy 


6 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


and Religion both make a claim which is un- 
limited. We cannot with a good conscience set 
either claim aside, and yet the two claims may 
come into collision. It is this fact which 
gives its special character to the tension between 
them. 

There is no region of a philosopher’s life—and 
I mean here by a philosopher everyone who is 
conscious of this claim of Philosophy upon him— 
which Philosophy can acquiesce in leaving 
unexplored; and, on the other hand, Religion 
cannot allow that there is any part of life which 
God has no right to claim for His service, and 
with which Religion has thus nothing to do. 
The only satisfactory treaty possible between 
two powers so exacting must be one comparable 
to the best kind of marriage, in which there is 
mutual devotion and mutual respect, each alike 
without reserve. Philosophy cannot permit 
Religion to keep, as it were, a secret chamber 
into which Philosophy may not intrude, nor can 
Religion suffer Philosophy to treat as illusory 
what Religion knows by experience to be 
real. 

Just as Philosophy must allow Religion to 
claim that the witness which religious experience 
bears to the nature of Reality be not ignored by 
Philosophy, so must Religion in turn allow 
Philosophy to subject religious experience, no 


BOTH INDISPENSABLE r 


less than any other kind of experience, to 
examination and criticism. 

It is sometimes thought that Religion can 
take the place of Philosophy; or, on the other 
hand, that Philosophy can take the place of 
Religion. Now no doubt there are a great many 
people who are not called upon to be philosophers 
at all, and of these not a few obtain, through 
their Religion, their view of that great Whole 
which includes all that happens to them or falls 
within their experience, and our concern with 
which distinguishes us human beings from the 
other animals; and so, since they do not go 
on to that closer study of the nature of this great 
Whole which we call Philosophy, for them 
Religion may be said to take the place ot 
Philosophy. But it is vain on this account to 
tell those in whom the spirit of free and thorough- 
going enquiry is once aroused that they can 
satisfy their intellectual hunger by taking on 
trust from their religious teachers the view of the 
world traditional among them. 

On the other hand, when the development of 
the powers of the human mind reaches a certain 
level, Philosophy does come to do what at an 
earlier stage is done by Religion in providing 
a view of the world as a whole; and so people 
who suppose it to be the sole business of Religion 
to provide such a view have gone on to think 


8 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


that Philosophy, which has thus taken over this 
function to a considerable extent already, will 
eventually take the place of Religion altogether. 
But what is really characteristic of Religion is 
not the provision of a view of the world as a 
whole, although such a view is always connected 
with it and even implied in it. What is really 
characteristic of Religion is rather what we may 
call the activity of worship. Now our natural 
need of an object for worship cannot be satisfied 
by Philosophy apart from Religion. That 
worship is natural to man is not the less true be- 
cause the need of it is not felt equally by all men, 
nor at all by some; nor is the statement that 
Philosophy cannot normally satisfy it disproved 
by the fact that here and there may be found 
an exceptional person who has enjoyed in 
philosophical speculation what seems to have 
been a truly religious experience. 

So far we have been speaking of Religion 
in general, and not of the Christian religion in 
particular. With respect to the Christian re- 
ligion there are two things to be said in this 
connection. The first is this: that if sometimes 
it seems more than some other religions to 
— resist reconciliation with Philosophy, it will be 

found that this is not because it is less but 
because it is more philosophical than these 
others. The second is that, as a matter of fact, 


HISTORICAL FACTS 9 


the historical relations of Christianity with 
Philosophy have been intimate and its services 
to Philosophy great. 

A characteristic feature of Christianity which 
is often thought to be an obstacle in the way 
of its reconciliation with Philosophy is the 
importance assigned in it to certain historical 
facts. It is true that the importance of the 
historical element is greater in Christianity 
than in any other religion, and that this circum- 
stance exposes Christianity more than any 
other religion to that particular kind of doubt 
which is called historic doubt. Yet Christianity 
is not thereby stamped as a less philosophical 
religion than one which is not so much exposed 
to this kind of doubt, but rather as a more 
philosophical. 

There is no greater or more difficult problem 
in Philosophy than that of the relation of 
abstract or universal significance to concrete 
or historical fact. Philosophy, if it fights shy 
of facing this question, does but refuse, if it may 
be so put, to take its last hurdle, and surrenders 
its hope of winning the race set before it. 

Hence, although religions which remain in 
the region of the abstract or universal significance 
and treat what is individual and historical as 
illusory or unimportant may seem to afford the 
philosopher a quieter shelter than Christianity, 


10 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


they do so at the cost of tempting him to abandon 
the supreme venture to which as a philosopher 
he is committed—the venture of understanding, 
not universal principles merely, but the real 
world of historical individuals, in which these 
principles can live and move and have an actual 
existence. In saying this, however, we must not 
be understood to deny or dispute the right of 
historical criticism to examine any historical 
statement, whether in Bible or Creed, just as it 
would any other. Though Philosophy has itself 
no jurisdiction in matters of History, freedom 
of thought everywhere is the greatest of philo- 
sophical interests, and there is a real solidarity 
between the claims of Philosophy and those of 
History to reject external dictation each in its 
own department. It is, as was said, a philo- 
sophical merit in Christianity to attach im- 
portance to historical facts; but this does not 
guarantee the truth of any particular fact to 
which Christian teachers have attached im- 
portance—that must be ascertained by an 
examination of the evidence in each case. 

Our second point was that the relations of 
Christianity to Philosophy had been intimate, 
and its services to Philosophy great. 

In the earlier ages of Christianity, as soon as 
the Gospel came to be preached to educated 
people, those who accepted it began to use the 


PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY 11 


philosophical conceptions of the world and life 
which were current in their day to help them 
in the understanding of their new beliefs; and 
to this day the language of the creeds and other 
statements of doctrine used in the Christian 
Church cannot be fully understood without 
some knowledge of the philosophies which in- 
fluenced those who in the early centuries of 
Christian history formulated these beliefs. The 
principal of these philosophies were the Platonic 
and the Stoic; the former especially affected the 
Christian teaching about God and the soul, 
the latter that about the rules of Christian 
conduct. 

In later days, when Christianity had become 
the established religion of Europe, philosophers, 
bred in Christian traditions and writing for 
others so bred, have constantly had Christian 
doctrines in mind when thinking about the 
ultimate nature of Reality; and, even where they 
have not themselves been seriously concerned 
to find a place in their view of the world for their 
own religious convictions, they have not been 
able to ignore the problem of the relation of the 
teaching of the Bible and Church to the results 
reached by their independent reflection. Thus 
if, as we said just now, the language of Christian 
theology is not intelligible apart from a know- 


ledge of ancient philosophy, that of much 


12 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


modern philosophy is barely intelligible apart 
from a knowledge of Christian theology. 

But not only have the relations of Christianity 
with Philosophy been intimate, the services of 
Christianity to Philosophy have been great. 
In virtue of the comprehensiveness of the 
religious experience for which Christianity 
stands, Christian theology has frequently borne 
useful testimony to aspects of Reality which the 
philosophical fashion was apt to neglect. Thus 
a type of thought has sometimes prevailed which 
is content to acknowledge the obvious distinct- 
ness of individual persons from one another, 
and can see nothing but, at the best, a mere 
metaphor in speaking of a common conscious- 
ness in which many may share, or of one’s 
responsibility for what others than one’s in- 
dividual self have done. Such a type of thought 
is bound to misconstrue or ignore not only 
what is called mysticism, but some quite ordinary 
experiences, such as our pride or shame in the 
triumph or humiliation of our nation, even when, 
as individuals, we had no part in bringing it about. 
But Christianity can never surrender itself to 
this type of thought; for it empties of their 
meaning the doctrines of the Trinity, the 
Incarnation, and the Atonement. Hence, when 
it has been dominant, Christian theology has 
remained unsubmissive, and has witnessed to the 


CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 13 


unity which is in the manifold, the identity 
which is in the diverse, until it has awakened 
Philosophy to react from the onesidedness of 
the prevailing doctrine. On the other hand, 
when a quite opposite type of thought, such as 
is often called—though not always properly 
called—pantheistic, has been in the ascendant, 
which can easily make room for such doctrines 
as I have mentioned, Christianity has more than 
once redressed the philosophical balance by 
inspiring a reaction against principles which 
would undermine the faith of Christians in a 
particular providence and their hope of an 
eternal life for individuals, and would also 
involve an abandonment of that insistence 
upon an historical revelation, upon ‘“‘ Jesus 
Christ come in the flesh,” which in the Church’s 
first period of controversy was her watchword 
against the Gnostics who sought to see in 
her Gospel only a symbol of something not 
historical at all. 

Christianity has also rendered more positive 
services to Philosophy. The most remarkable 
of these were the result of the efforts of the 
Church in earlier centuries of our era to discover 
a statement adequate to express her conscious- 
ness that there had been sent forth into the 
hearts of her members a Spirit proceeding from 
her Founder, which (as St. Paul puts it) cried 


14 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


in them “Abba, Father ”’—that is, made them 
aware of being by adoption through Him that 
which He already was—namely, sons of God. 
It was found impossible to be content with any 
formula which made the Fatherhood of God any 
less than an eternal characteristic of His nature; 
and this meant that the Son of God and the 
Spirit in which He is one with His Father and 
we may be one with Him must be regarded 
as necessary to the completeness of God’s life. 
In this doctrine of the Trinity, as it is generally 
called, there was presented a conception of what 
a spiritual being at its highest and fullest must 
be which may fairly be said to be philosophically 
more satisfactory than any made during the same 
period on similar lines by thinkers outside the 
Church. Again, im connection with the 
elaboration of this same doctrine of God as 
Father, Son, and Spirit, Christian theology gave 
the greatest assistance toward the development 
of the notion of Personality, a notion of the 
profoundest importance, for which the ancient 
philosophers had no special name at all; but for 
which a name, which we still use to express it, 
was found in the course of the discussions 
carried on by Christian theologians concerning 
the union of the divine and human natures in 
Jesus Christ. 

But, although Philosophy has thus profited 


UTILITARIANISM 15 


by its association with Christianity, it would be 
a mistake to regard Christianity as imposing a 
particular philosophy upon its adherents, or 
as forbidding such of them as are genuine 
students of Philosophy to explore the possibili- 
ties of any line of thought whatsoever. No 
doubt certain views may be more difficult to 
reconcile than others with a Christian’s religious 
experience, just as other experiences—for 
example, those of an artist or of a lover—may 
indispose those who enjoy them to embrace 
opinions in which men of a different tempera- 
ment might not find the same difficulties. But 
we have no more right to refuse to tolerate what 
we ourselves judge to be an inconsistency in a 
man whose philosophical convictions seem to us 
to clash with his religion than in one whose 
philosophical convictions seem to clash with his 
art or his love. History shows us that eminent 
Christians have often espoused and defended 
philosophical positions which appear at first 
to leave no room for Christian principles. 

Thus, many might be inclined to say that 
what is called Utilitarianism is such a position. 
This is the doctrine in moral philosophy that we 
can ultimately desire nothing but our own 
pleasure, but that, when we come to recognize 
that other men’s pleasure is as much to them 
as ours is to us, we shall feel constrained to set 


16 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


before ourselves as the grand end of all our 
conduct the greatest happiness (meaning by 
happiness pleasure and the absence of pain) of 
the greatest number. Yet a doctrine of this 
sort was earnestly maintained by no less famous 
a champion of Christianity than Paley, whose 
work on “‘ Natural Theology ” was long regarded 
in this country as the standard exposition of the 
argument for the existence of God from the 
facts of the natural world, and his treatise on 
the “ Evidences of Christianity ”’ as the standard 
account of the historical grounds for believing 
the story of the Gospels. 

It will repay us to consider a little more closely 
the problem thus presented to us. Nowadays 
it would generally be felt that the emphasis laid 
by Utilitarianism on the satisfaction of the in- 
dividual’s desire for pleasure was not consonant 
with the precept and example of self-sacrifice 
set before us in the New Testament. On the 
other hand, it cannot be denied that in the 
New Testament there is no hesitation about the 
promising of rewards for virtue or threatening 
of punishments for wrong-doing—rewards and 
punishments described as everlasting in either 
case. We are apt to fight shy of such language, 
the use of which, to enforce moral teaching, 
agrees very well with the theory of Utilitarianism. 
We see here a reciprocal action between 


IDEALISM 1% 


Philosophy and Christianity, in which they may 
be said mutually to correct one another. It is 
principally on the ground of the fact, strongly 
urged by certain moral philosophers (and notably 
by Kant), that disinterestedness is of the very 
nature of Morality, which cannot in the end 
admit any reason for doing one’s duty except 
that it is one’s duty, that we are inclined to avoid 
the scriptural language about rewards and 
punishments; for it may be interpreted, we 
think, as meaning that such an external reason 
can be given, and as disparaging the intrinsic 
obligatoriness of benevolence and justice. On 
the other hand, the opposite philosophical 
theory, which accorded with the use in the 
Christian Scriptures of promises of future 
happiness and threats of future misery as induce- 
ments to the pursuit of virtue and avoidance of 
vice, is often discarded because it is felt to jar 
with the supreme dignity accorded in Christianity 
to the ungrudging sacrifice of self, illustrated 
by the Cross of Calvary. 

I will take another instance, and this time 
I will choose a doctrine, not of moral but of 
metaphysical philosophy, and one which, in- 
stead of appearing to many people at first sight 
inconsistent with the Christian view of the 
world, has seemed to some to be the only theory 
fully in harmony with it. It is the doctrine of 


18 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


Bishop Berkeley that the external world of 
material objects, whereof our senses make us 
aware, depends for its existence upon being 
perceived by some mind. For, since it is ob- 
viously very hard to believe that it depends for 
its existence upon being perceived by any one of 
us, who perceive it whether we will or not, we 
may thus be easily led on to the thought of an 
eternal Mind, to which this world is perpetually 
present, and which excites the idea of it in ours 
for the guidance of our lives. 

Berkeley himself held that the one sufficiently 
convincing philosophical justification of a belief 
in God lay in the arguments by which he showed 
that the material world depends on the divine 
Spirit, not only in its origin, but for its very 
being at each moment as an object of perception, 
while, except as an actual or possible object of 
perception, we cannot think of it at all or attach 
any meaning to the language we use about it. 
And in our own day there are distinguished 
philosophical defenders of the Christian religion 
who find in this same doctrine, as modified in 
certain ways which we need not here consider, 
the most, if not the only, satisfactory basis of 
a faith im a personal Creator and Ruler of the 
universe. Yet a majority even of Christian 
philosophers have never held an “ idealism ” 
(as it is called) of this kind, and it is possible to 


MATERIALISM 19 


give reasons for thinking that it is not really so 
completely harmonious with the religious ex- 
perience of Christian believers as its supporters 
have supposed and contended. And, on the 
other hand, there have been eminent Christian 
thinkers who have been, as_ philosophers, 
champions of materialism, the very theory by 
demolishing which the system of Berkeley and 
of the idealists who have succeeded him has 
earned its reputation of promoting the interests 
of Religion. The first of the Latin fathers, 
Tertullian, was a materialist; and it was not 
because of his materialism that he was denied 
the title “ saint ’” usually accorded to the ancient 
doctors of the Church, but because of his action 
in separating himself from the main body of 
Christians and joining himself with a group 
which believed itself to be possessed of prophetic 
gifts, and insisted on an austere and rigorous 
rule of conduct, by failing to maintain which the 
authorities of the Church had, in the judgment 
of these Puritan sectaries, forfeited their title 
to represent the Christian name. In modern 
times, and in our own country, the materialist 
Hartley was an apologist for Christianity; and 
Priestley, though not an orthodox Christian, 
found a similar philosophy compatible with 
faith in a God, in the divine mission of Christ, 
and in a future life. 


90 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


The lesson to be drawn from these facts is not, 
however, that which is sometimes drawn—that 
philosophical theories come and go, while the 
teaching of the Christian Church remains ever 
the same, unaflected by the fluctuations of 
opinion. On the contrary, the teaching of the 
Church has not, as a matter of fact, been un- 
aflected by these fluctuations; and if it 1s true 
that very various philosophies have been found 
to be compatible with Christianity, it is also 
true that the same philosophy has often been 
held by adherents of various religions. The true 
lesson is rather that Christian experience 1s one 
of the facts which philosophy must take into 
account, just as moral experience is, or that of 
the artist, or, again, of the man of science ; 
and that therefore one’s philosophical view 
of the world must not be inconsistent with 
it, if it is to be satisfactory. Various views 
of the world may, however, be put forward 
as consistent with it, and it is possible that 
more than one may make out its claim to 
be so. 

It may be well to end this paper with some 
suggestions on the attitude which should be 
taken up towards the religious perplexities of 
children and young people by their elder friends. 
The poet Tennyson has spoken in a well-known 
passage of “ In Memoriam ” of those who, when 


RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 21 


doubt of the truth of Religion makes its ap- 
pearance, would have us 


«| . crush it, like a vice of blood, 
Upon the threshold of the mind.” 


Of late psychologists have been disposed to 
question whether this is the proper treatment 
even for a “ vice of blood.” Their investigations 
have led them to think that mere repression is 
apt, while driving the perverted instinct or 
mischievous tendency below the threshold of 
consciousness, to induce its reappearance in the 
form of morbid impulses which the will cannot 
control, and the true source of which is unknown 
to their victim, and can only be discovered by 
the skill of experts in the cure of nervous dis- 
orders. A full confession would often, it seems, 
be a better remedy in the eyes of the physician, 
as it has long been in those of the priest. But 
however this may be in the case of a “ vice of 
blood,’’ unquestionably it is so in the case of 
an intellectual doubt; it should be brought to 
the light, and met, not with shocked disapproval, 
but with sympathetic interest and rational 
arguments. Nay, the emergence of doubt in 
the mind of an intelligent child should be 
foreseen as a normal phase of intellectual 
development. The child should even be en- 
couraged to look forward to changes of view 


22 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 


as he grows older, but meanwhile to acquire 
a real religious experience of his own by the 
practice of prayer and of thought about re- 
ligion. It should never be suggested that 
religion is afraid of free enquiry. While a spirit 
of reverence should be cultivated, a superstitious 
dread of irreverence should be discouraged. © 
Jests about words or things with sacred associa- 
tions should not be indiscriminately treated 
as blasphemous. The right analogy here is that 
of a child’s jests about his parents. There are 
some such jests which no child with a real 
respect or love for his parents would make, 
others which are compatible with such respect 
and love, and even significant of affectionate 
familiarity. 

All genuine love of knowledge should be 
fostered, and a complete honesty of outlook 
recommended and encouraged, and the young 
man or woman should be taught to regard 
Reason, not as (according to an expression of 
Luther’s) an evil beast to be slain in sacrifice 
to God, but rather (in a favourite phrase of 
Bishop Butler, borrowed from the Book of 
Proverbs) as “ the candle of the Lord.” Doubt 
should be looked upon as a natural incident im 
the life of a thinking servant of God, and as part 
of his appointed discipline, not to be got rid of 
at all costs, but to be allowed to play its proper 


PLACE OF DOUBT IN EDUCATION 23 


part in the religious development of the young, 
just as the discussion of controverted questions 
in the debating society does in their training as 
citizens of a free State. 

I am, of course, speaking here of genuine 
intellectual difficulties. But even where there 
lies behind, and at the root of, discontent with 
the religion which has been taught, the in- 
suigence of passions which seek to escape the 
restraints imposed by religious principles, while 
a wise elder will certainly be on his guard against 
encouraging the probably only half-conscious 
hypocrisy which would put forward the specula- 
tive problem and mask the unruly desire, he 
will yet take seriously the speculative problem 
itself. For, even from the point of view of 
morality, resistance to temptation may be 
permanently weakened by recurrmg doubt as 
to the reasonableness of the principle which 
prescribes resistance. 

In according to religious doubt such recogni- 
tion as has here been recommended of its 
legitimate place in spiritual development, we 
shall only be assenting to methods actually 
employed by God in the education of humanity, 
and obeying the apostolic injunction to be 
fellow-workers with Him. And it is precisely in 
the possibility of this co-operation with God that 
the capacity of man for Religion consists. 


Il 


THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF 
RELIGIONS 


By H. U. WEITBRECHT STANTON, Pu.D., D.D. 


THE present-day student of religion has an im- 
mense advantage over his fellow of a generation 
ago in the wealth of material to his hand. The 
progress made in knowledge of the religions of 
the world is almost incalculable, and the percep- 
tion of orderly connection in the great mass of 
beliefs and worships has greatly increased. In 
place of two or three historical religions and a 
dozen mythological ones, surrounded by a mass 
of confused and savage cults, the student now 
sees religion, like language, as a living, growing 
function of man’s nature. The missionary and 
explorer in many lands have lived with the 
primitive peoples, entered into their manner of 
life, got to understand their feelings, and learned 
their ideas of things unseen which the savage 
is very shy of expressing to an unsympathetic 
questioner. On the basis of these observations, 
and on deeper research regarding the greater 


religions, a new science has been built up, the 
24 


UNITY OF RELIGIONS 25 


Comparative Science of Religion. Time was 
when some writers freely asserted that the human 
tribes of low culture had no religion. The very 
contrary has been proved, as in the case of the 
Australian aborigines, who were once supposed 
to be without religion, but are now realized to 
be tied up in their whole life by a multitude of 
religious beliefs and observances far more com- 
plicated than our own. In fact, primitive 
religions, like primitive languages, are more 
highly articulated than those more advanced. 
Amid this great variety are seen both excellences 
and deformities of growth, both progress and 
decadence; yet with all the great dissimilarities 
there is everywhere a fundamental unity: man 
is seeking adjustment or reconciliation with an 
unseen power or powers that rule his life. 
Nothing less than this is sought by the lowest, 
nothing more is revealed by the highest. 

We and our children are thus able to view 
religion from a new angle. So to explore the 
religions of the world and to teach about them 
is a fascinating and inspiring task, yet in setting 
ourselves to it certain difficulties arise. Ifthere is 
this fundamental unity, and if there are so many 
similarities and excellences in other religions 
apart from Christianity, have we any longer the 
right to regard the faith of the Bible as unique ? 
The missionary who has to deal with non- 


26 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


Christian religions of higher or lower culture 
has to answer this and the like questions 
both in thought and practice. Perhaps the 
thinking of a missionary may help some fellow- 
thinkers. 

The main difficulties that I have come across 
have to do with the origin of religion, the process 
of religion, and the aim of religion, and I propose 
to deal with them in this order. 


1. THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 


The material offered to us in the primitive 
religions of the world is so vast and varied that 
one can only select a few of the most outstanding 
features for consideration. 

(a) These religions are often classed under the 
common term “‘Animism,” because their belief 
and practices are governed by the conception of 
a soul or souls in men and things. This soul is 
often imagined as a kind of fine stuff which 
inhabits the body, leaving it at times, as im 
dreams, and permanently at death. It may be 
increased or diminished, and much of the magic 
and other observances of these religions has to 
do with the preservation or strengthening of 
this soul-stuff. The same kind of life-principle 
inhabits animals, plants, and even minerals, and 
all these have to be dealt with, as need demands, 


GHOSTS AND DEITIES 270 


by the priest or medicine-man who knows the 
secret of their connections. When the savage 1s 
perplexed by the movements and general be- 
haviour of many men and things, he lays it to the 
account of this unseen stuff as producing effects 
the reason of which he cannot see or feel. Can 
this be the origin of belief in a soul as distinct 
from the body 2 

Again, the belief in the survival of the soul 
in some fashion is practically universal among 
primitive races. The life of the ghost is regarded 
as a faint continuance of the man’s bodily exist- 
ence, and the ghost has a desire to remain in the 
neighbourhood of its body. If balked or ill 
provided with what is necessary to its comfort 
in the spirit-world, it becomes an enemy of the 
living who have neglected it, and it may injure 
them by bringing disease, death, or loss of 
property, and the like. Therefore, many of the 
religious observances of the survivors are in- 
tended either to drive away the ghost or to pro- 
pitiate it, and the ritual connected with death 
and burial, or other disposal of the dead, becomes 
important and elaborate. Among more advanced 
tribes, who have learned to value and honour 
age and experience in the living, departed 
ancestors are regarded with special veneration 
and regularly worshipped. Such worship may 
develop into divine honour, so that a specially 


28 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


famous ancestor comes to be regarded as a god. 
This has been offered by writers of ancient and 
modern times as a sufficient explanation of the 
belief in a god or gods. The deity is supposed 
to be like the spectre of the Brocken, a magnified 
shadow of man cast by his imagination on the 
mist of tribal traditions. 

(6) But it is remarkable that among the most 
different races, and in regions of the earth most 
widely separated, we find a persistent belief in 
a supreme God and creator of mankind; yet 
equally general is the practical conviction that, 
though benevolent, or at least not harmful, He is 
a remote being whom men need not much trouble 
about, and that the beings with whom they are 
really concerned in their religious observances 
are the spirits of men or beasts or plants or 
places, who will hurt them if not worshipped 
or propitiated. Almost all animistic rites have 
to do with these spirits. The dread of them 
dominates the life of the animist, and no feature 
of the Christian faith is more attractive to him 
than the message of a Saviour who has over- 
thrown these evil powers, and an Almighty 
Father who is not far off, but near by, and who 
cares for His children. In fact, this aspect of 
primitive religion does not so much suggest 
the origin of later beliefs as the deterioration 
of an earlier and more really childlike belief in 


NATURE WORSHIP AND SACRIFICE 29 


a good God who has created and also rules 
the world. 

(c) These minor deities that dwell in natural 
objects, and more or less control them, are 
naturally thought of as intimately connected 
with the life and phases of nature, such as the 
growth and decay of vegetation and the changes 
of the seasons. In some cases worship is paid 
to the great objects of nature on which man’s life 
or welfare depends—the gun, moon, and stars; 
the ocean or the river; the wind and the rain. 
The priest or magician is he who knows how to 
make these powers propitious to man. If they 
have done him harm the deity must be angry, and 
some kind of sacrifice must be brought which 
will turn away his wrath. The more costly the 
sacrifice the greater its effect, and most precious 
of all is the sacrifice of a man, a world-wide rite. 
But animal sacrifices and offerings of food or 
other possessions are even more general. If 
the substance of the sacrifice ig destroyed by 
fire or otherwise, it is regarded as being consumed 
by the deity; but far more often it is consumed 
by the priests and the worshippers who become 
guests at the table of the god. In those cases 
where the god is the personification of a nature 
process, such as that of the seasons, he may be 
conceived as dying in the winter and rising to 
new life in the spring, and this may be repre- 


30 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


sented in a sacrificial rite, followed by a meal 
in which the worshipper is regarded as feeding 
upon the god. But the more general idea is 
that of an appropriation by the sacrificial meal 
of the soul-stuff of the victim and the power 
inherent in it. We cannot wonder that some 
have sought in such observances and ideas the 
origin of the Christian ideas of atonement and 
sacramental communion. 

In a word, then, there are striking analogies, 
entirely independent of missionary contact, 
between certain widely spread pagan beliefs and 
rites and certain great teachings and observances 
of the Christian faith. What is the real relation 
between them? To get a clear reply we must 
first ask: What is the true origin of religion as 
such ? That religion is an essential element in 
human life is not nowadays disputed. It is, 
then, like other factors in human life, the 
expression of a need and the effort to satisfy that 
need, but, unlike those other factors, it has to do 
with powers or forces that are not discerned 
by the senses. Now religion, like all other 
growths, 1s truly understood, not by its rudest 
and most elementary forms, but by its highest 
development. The universal sense of man that 
he must adjust himself to a higher power to 
whom he is in some way accountable is nothing 
but man’s universal and elemental need of God, 


CHRISTIAN ANALOGIES 31 


and of the fullest revelation of God which he is 
capable of receiving. Viewed in this light, the 
ideas of soul-stuff distinct from the body and of 
the ghost after death are a dim recognition of 
the spiritual element in man, and a reaching 
out aiter the hope of immortality; the notion of 
a great but remote God, and of the dangerous 
spirits with whom man has practically to do, is 
a distorted perception of the fact that we fail 
to reach the good God by reason of the powers of 
evil that surround us. The sacrifice and the 
feast on the victim express the need of recon- 
ciliation with God and of participation in His 
lite. In other words, these and similar analogies 
between primitive religions and Christianity are 
the strivings of man, often pathetic, sometimes 
heroic, to satisfy the hunger of his soul after 
those spiritual realities which are revealed by 
God in Christ. 


Il. THe Process oF RELIGION. 


When a comparative review is made of the 
history of religions which has resulted in their 
present distribution, we observe certain lines of 
growth and progress, though not without in- 
dications also of retrogression and decay. It is 
possible to classify the growth of religions in 
different ways. Thus, according to the object 


32 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


worshipped we may distinguish the primitive 
religions of fetish worship and magic, the higher 
nature religions which adore and eventually 
personify the higher powers of nature and some- 
times lead up to something like theism, and the 
theistic religions which ascribe a moral character 
to the one sole God. Or, again, the types may be 
distinguished according to social evolution as 
tribal and national and universal. Such classi- 
fications are useful as enabling us to understand 
and visualize the main features of religion, but 
they are not like partitions in a set of pigeon- 
holes: they cross and interlace; features of one 
type crop out in another, as, for instance, fetishism 
appears in a theistic religion in the case of the 
Black Stone in the sanctuary of Mecca. A 
gradation from lower to higher forms may be 
established, but it by no means follows that one 
form succeeds another in time according to the 
scheme laid down. 

It is necessary to remember this when certain 
conclusions are drawn from the application of 
the theory of evolution to the comparative study 
of religions. This application has been made 
both as regards the outward conditions of 
religion and its inward consciousness. 

(2) Viewing the world religions as a whole, their 
variety exhibits different stages of development. 
It is therefore supposed that religions, like other 


. 


FACTORS THAT SHAPE RELIGION 33 


aspects of life, are the natural products of various 
objective factors. There is environment, such 
as that of the Semite, whose spacious deserts 
and mountains, with their droughts and cloud- 
bursts, are supposed to incline him to sombre 
and elevated notions of a stern and powerful 
deity. There is the influence of race, as with 
the virile races of northern peoples of Europe, 
whose gods are fighters and their heaven a 
banqueting-hall of heroes. There is the in- 
fluence of history, as when the age-long, orderly 
social life of China has minimized the importance 
of distinctions of belief, and concentrated re- 
ligion on the worship of the social order as 
represented by ancestors. It is often argued 
that religion, by adaptation to successive en- 
vironments, has thus developed into the forms 
that we now find, and that, therefore, each such 
form represents the stage of the religious life 
which is best suited to the pitch of development 
at which its adherents have arrived. An ad- 
vanced form of religion which may in itself be 
higher would not, it is argued, be so well suited 
to promote their general well-being. There are 
those, for instance, who say that though Islam 
may be, as a religion, inferior to Christianity, 
yet it is better suited to the culture and 
temperament of the negro races than Christianity. 
Such a religion may, they think, by its very 


34 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


imperfections, such as the institutions of domestic 
slavery or polygamy, supply a useful social 
element that Christianity lacks; or, as in the case 
of Hinduism, it may teach doctrines, such as that 
of reincarnation, which are lacking in Christianity, 
yet seem to meet a need. Why, then, should 
we insist on the acceptance of Christianity by 
peoples of every stage of culture and thought ? 
(6) If, in reply to this, reference is made to 
the need of deliverance from the moral mischief 
of sin witnessed by man’s conscience, the question 
is raised: May not conscience itself, after all, 
be a result of evolution? That the standards of 
right and wrong, and with them the judgments 
of conscience, vary much in different times and 
places cannot be denied. There are the taboos 
of primitive religions, the ceremonial food 
regulations of a higher stage, the ordeal of battle 
for vindication of honour (still surviving in the 
duel), the enforcement of religious profession by 
violence, and a hundred other matters in which 
the moral standards of mankind have changed and 
are changing still. Accordingly, there are those 
who maintain that the development of conscience 
is nothing but the growth of social sanctions 
from stage to stage of culture. What is con- 
ceived as useful to the well-being of society at 
a given stage is regarded as good or right; what 
is injurious to it is bad and wrong. As the con- 


RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 30 


ception of the social whole is extended and 
clarified, so the scope and level of morality is 
raised: social and good, antisocial and bad, are 
synonymous. If so, then to demand from a 
people a moral standard above their stage of 
development is really antisocial and wrong. 

(c) When the attempt is made to explain the facts 
of religion by the theory of evolution, we must 
needs ask what exactly is meant by evolution. 
Very often it is spoken of as if it were a force 
which produces such and such results, but it is, 
of course, nothing of the kind. The word simply 
means unrolling or unfolding, as a flower from 
the bud, and the theory means that things in 
nature have in an immense number of instances 
been observed to work out in this way, and 
therefore by the constitution of our minds we 
cannot help expecting that they will do so in 
other cases also. But in itself evolution is simply 
the name of a process or way in which a great 
many things have happened, and its test is that 
of fact. Do they or did they actually so happen ? 
How does this test apply to the cases in point ? 

The influence of the outside factors of environ- 
ment, race, and history on the shaping of religion 
is not a negligible quantity, but it is so varied, 
and sometimes contradictory, that it is utterly 
insufficient, even as an explanation of how 
matters religious work out as a rule. The 


36 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


Christian religion, which sprang from a Semitic 
source, has had its greatest vogue in surroundings 
which are most alien from those of its original 
home. The same race which gave birth to the 
pantheism of Hinduism produced the atheism of 
original Buddhism. The same history of a people 
under a foreign Power resulted in one part of the 
Jewish nation expanding into the world-wide 
community of the Christian Church, and the other 
confining itself permanently within the limits of 
its old traditional law. The fact is that things in 
religion do not happen simply on the lines which 
may be observed in unconscious or subhuman 
nature. These outward factors have their un- 
doubted and important influence on religion, but 
the form in which that influence appears is 
determined by the factor of human wills which 
no scientific formula can express. The adoption 
or shaping of a religion may be affected by a 
hundred outside influences, but ultimately it is 
determined by an act of yielding or resisting— 
in a word, of choice. 

(d) This is even more evident when we come to 
the development of the moral sense, which we 
call conscience. The operation of conscience is a 
kind of thinking, and, like other thinking, it may 
include error as well as truth. But the reason 
for giving conscience a special name is not its 
infallibility, but that it passes a particular kind 


THE STANDARD OF CONSCIENCE 37 


of “* value judgment,” and it is not true that this 
judgment is ultimately regulated by regard for 
the well-being, in an external sense, of the com- 
munity. The value standard of conscience, 
whether for the individual or the community, 
may, and often does, rule out the values of 
pleasure, profit, honour, and life itself, and sub- 
stitutes for them one ruling value of “ ought- 
ness “—1t.e., right as against wrong, however 
much the wrong may comprise of other values. 
In history this has again and again been shown 
by the example of nations or communities who 
have preferred the risk of being wiped out rather 
than be unfaithful to the moral demands of 
honour or religion. The rejection for conscience’ 
sake of other human goods is a thing which all of 
us witnessed in war-time. Liven if in the case of 
“conscientious objectors’ the general sense has 
stamped their refusal to fight as contrary to the 
common interest, that has not meant a denial 
of respect to the person who acted according to 
the ideal of right as he saw it. The standard of 
a particular conscience may not be in itself the 
highest, but it must be the highest that a man 
knows, or else it could not override all other 
standards. Can we, then, believe that the moral 
tribunal of conscience, which is prepared to 
negate all other standards of well-being for the 
man or society, has its origin in a regard for 


38 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


social standards as supreme? It would, indeed, 
be a strange thing if the result of imcreasing 
clearness of thought about the ultimate moral 
standard were the complete dethronement of it. 
As a concrete thing conscience may be ill-informed 
or degenerate and in need of complete renewal, 
but ideally it can be nothing less than conformity 
to a perfect standard, and that standard is to be 
found, not in the crude and unshaped beginnings 
of development, still less in deviations and set- 
backs caused by sloth and selfishness. It comes 
from above, and is found where the unity of all 
perfection is realized—that is, in God. 

Nor is this a mere ideal. I have spoken above 
of the universal need of man for God, and this 
involves a judgment of himself in the light of the 
perfect standard when and as he perceives it, 
and this judgment results in the sense of sin as 
a falling short of, or an opposition to, the perfect 
will which that standard expresses. It is sin 
rooted in the wrong desires and thoughts of man 
which is anti-social. It is deliverance from sin 
which is the one fundamental need of man, and 
the gospel of JesusChrist which offers that deliver- 
ance has gone and is going to every race of man, 
and everywhere it meets the need without dis- 
tinction of stages of culture or differences of race, 
provided only that it is truly presented, not 
merely in word, but im life, and that it is sin- 


HOW DO RELIGIONS WORK OUT? 39 


cerely received. The claim of Christ to unique- 
ness and universality is sustained by the facts 
of experience, and nothing but the highest as 
revealed in Him will serve the true interests and 
growth of humanity. The theory of evolution 
is a very convenient mind garment at our 
present stage of growth, but it is one which has 
not a few rents and gaps. It may passably 
cover the nakedness of our ignorance by helping 
us to trace how things came about, but it reveals 
to us nothing of why they are, or what for, and 
these are the questions which religion is bound 
to answer. 


Ill. Tae Arm oF RELIGION. 


The aim of religion is both to answer an enquiry 
and to mark out a course of action, and the value 
of the answer is tested by the worth, both inner 
and outer, of the resultant action. Accordingly, 
in all religions we have some teaching about God 
or, at least, an unknown power under whose 
control we are, and about behaviour towards 
our fellow-men. When men and women go 
abroad for the first time to non-Christian coun- 
tries, the impression produced upon them often 
amounts to this: Here are people who don’t 
believe in Christianity, and mostly have never 
heard of it, but they worship a deity of some 


40 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


sort, and their religion teaches them to do good 
much as ours does, and, like us, some of them are 
good people and some bad. In the last resort it 
looks as if all religions teach pretty much the 
same thing. What do the differences matter, 
and why should we trouble them with our doc- 
trines, if they are decent people? It is the 
attitude summed up in Pope’s couplet: 


“For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight; 
His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.” 


The same thing in a more constructive way is 
put by so-called theosophy, especially as regards 
the higher religions of the East. In all of them, 
it is said, the real adepts in religion put aside the 
popular mythology or theology in favour of the 
belief that God is indwelling in all men and 
things, and that those who thus recognize Him 
may find a direct spiritual approach to Him 
through meditation, asceticism, and rites handed 
down from ancient sages. The customary 
beliefs and traditions need not be interfered with; 
they serve, according to the mentality and 
habits of different peoples, as avenues to the 
one centre of ultimate truth, which is the same 
for all. Can it be that this gives us the reality 
of spiritual religion without the exclusiveness of 
Christianity ? 

Here, again, we do well to have recourse to 


GOD AND MORALITY 41 


facts. Do all the religions, even the higher ones, 
teach us much the same about God and morality, 
and about the relation of God to morality ? 

The fact is that we have in the different 
religions widely different ideas of God. We have 
noticed how, in the primitive religions, the idea 
of a supreme God is so thin and unsubstantial 
that it has little practical effect on life or even 
on worship. In the religions of India and the 
Har Hast we find two aspects of deity. There are 
for the people gods and godlings innumerable, 
frankly treated as independent powers; for the 
more thoughtful worshipper a few main deities, 
addressed by some as co-ordinate powers, by 
others as manifestations of a supreme divine 
unity. Polytheism—that is, the worship of gods 
many and lords many—is in clear evidence over 
a considerable part of mankind. Such divinities 
are necessarily imperfect and mostly disfigured 
by sins and blemishes like those of men. In the 
philosophic interpretation of polytheism, as in 
India, the essence of all life, divine or human, 
or in nature, is held to be absolutely one. While, 
therefore, the deities, one and all, are mani- 
festations of that one Life, men, animals, and all 
things else are no less so. In it there can be no 
ultimate distinction of good or bad: all emerge 
from the same infinite ocean of existence and 
sink back into it. Over against the pantheism 


42 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


of the Hindu religion we find in Islam the con- 
trary conception of a personal God who has laid 
down a moral law; but His essence is defined as 
pure power, and the ultimate distinctions of 
right and wrong are not based on the moral 
attributes of deity, but on the power to lay down 
what omnipotence pleases. He may allow as 
right to a favoured slave what would be wrong 
in others, or He may go back from the principle 
that His kingdom is not to be established by 
earthly warfare to the command that it shall 
be propagated by fighting. 

Tn fine, the different religions do not say very 
much the same about God, but, on the contrary, 
they put forth very different and even contradic- 
tory conceptions of Him. And from this it follows 
that their teaching about morality is not and 
cannot be identical, for the conception of God 
radically affects, as we have seen, the conception 
of morality. So it works out in fact. Rules for 
individual and social behaviour as a whole are 
bound to be fairly similar throughout the world, 
because they represent the conditions under 
which men get on tolerably well with one another. 
But where the conception of God is defective it 
repeatedly happens that there is flat contradic- 
tion between the sanctions of religion and the 
dictates of morality. Religious prostitution is 
a practice of immemorial antiquity which still 


TRUTH AND LIFE 43 


survives in modern times, as in the case of the 
temple girls in India, who are married to the god 
in childhood and brought up to be used by his 
priests and worshippers as a religious act. 
Sunilarly the brotherhood of Thugs, now extinct, 
had their own divine patroness whom they wor- 
shipped with peculiarly solemn rites before each 
expedition for strangling and robbing travellers. 
Instances of this kind might be multiplied from 
among many nations. 

Religion is a doctrine, and it cannot be in- 
different to the truth of the teachings which are 
put forward in its name, because its doctrines 
should be founded on facts: by which God has 
made Himself known. Sincerity in belief is an 
indispensable condition of true religion, but thé 
truth of a fact does not depend on the sincerity 
or warmth of the conviction any more than the 
satisfaction of hunger depends on the firm belief 
that a meal is ready. To say that beliefs in 
mutually destructive doctrines will all lead up 
to the same truth is as futile in religion as in 
science. The question whether there can be 
an absolute religion such as the theosophist 
postulates is on the same plane as that of 
a knowledge of the Absolute; it is an academic 
discussion which we may leave to technical 
philosophy. But that is not to deny that we 


may have, and should strive after, clearness of 
i) 


44 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 


thought in matters of religion. The aim of 
religion on the side of the intellect is to appre- 
hend God as He has actually revealed Himself 
in history—that is, in the affairs of men as we 
know them in the past or present. But religion 
is more than a doctrine; it is a life, and the aim 
of the doctrine is to show how the new life for 
sinful man flows out of the great fact of God's 
revelation of Himself in Christ. As we study the 
comparative science of religion we see the 
universal need of that life. It is our part to take 
hold of it, to live it out, to witness it to all the 
world. 


If] 


THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
By W. M. BELL, B.D. (Lonp.). 


ALTHOUGH it may safely be asserted that there 
is not, and cannot be, any quarrel between true 
religion and true science, that the discrepancy 
which was supposed in Victorian times to exist 
between the two is now happily defunct, it ig 
still a fact that among the masses a vague idea 
exists that the Bible is no longer credible or of 
any value, and that science has “ exploded ” 
the faith of past generations. The Christian 
Evidence lecturer in public places finds himself 
heckled with morsels of Strauss, aphorisms of 
Haeckel and Huxley which percolated down to 
the crowds twenty years ago, and have not yet 
been replaced by anything more modern. The 
Christian believer, on his side, is at times in no 
better case; too often he meets a ridiculous 
attack on his faith with an equally impossible 
defence of it, with memories of Paley’s evidences, 
or of the arguments of some champion of bygone 
ages. Worse still, he sometimes believes him- 


self, quite wrongly, to be unorthodox and dis- 
4.5 


46 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


qualified from active Christian work on account 
of a general acceptance of the idea of evolution, 
or owing to some failure to see the true bearing 
of the Old Testament on the Christian religion. 
The writer knows of a devout and religiously- 
minded day-school teacher who felt unable 
conscientiously to teach a Scripture lesson to 
children by reason of non-belief in the literal 
truth of some quite unimportant portion of the 
Old Testament narrative. The object of this 
essay is to save would-be defenders of the 
faith from helping a good cause in a wrong 
way; to assist those who have to teach Scripture 
to a scientific point of view; and to show that if 
the Bible is regarded from that standpoint, 
difficulties and disbeliefs simply do not arise. 

If the cardinal doctrines of Christianity were 
the basis of all religious and biblical teaching, 
most of the contents of this essay would be 
unnecessary; for in that case every child would 
understand that the Christian religion does not 
stand or fall with the story of Balaam’s ass, 
or with the account of any single incident re- 
corded in the ancient documents, but that the 
Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ her 
Lord. If the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the 
Ten Commandments were the bed-rock on which 
all Scripture teaching were based, then nobody's 
faith would be troubled for more than ten seconds 


RELIGION AND SCIENCE 47 


on end by hearing an atheist in the Park make 
merry over Cain’s wife; but, unfortunately, in 
Kingland, where the difference between being 
taught religion and learning lists of Kings of 
Israel and Judah is not clearly apprehended, 
where most of the anti-religious attack is directed 
at the Bible, it is very necessary that special 
instruction on the best methods and principles 
of studymg and teaching the Scriptures should 
be given. 

In practically every English school the pupil 
has at least one Bible lesson a week and an 
increasing number of lessons in natural science; 
and, where the teaching of science is separated 
from all mention of religion, it is inevitable 
that he will feel certain discrepancies between 
the two; but before dealing with such dis- 
agreements it 1s necessary to issue a caution 
against wrong and dangerous methods of treat- 
ing them. 


I. Wrone MeEtTHops. 


(a) The Method of Water-tight Compartments. 
—By this method the teaching of religion and the 
teaching of science are kept entirely separate, 
so that one department of the mind is kept for 
biblical knowledge and another for scientific, 
and all interplay of the two, as far as possible, 
prevented. IfScripture seems to teach one thing, 


48 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


well, that concerns religion. If geology teaches 
something different, that affair belongs to science, 
and science and religion are different things. 
This method is impossible in practice. The 
mind cannot be subdivided into thought-tight 
compartments, and any new idea presented to it 
instantly collides with all other ideas in the mind 
and must either settle down happily with them or 
berejected. That religious ideas are no exception 
to this rule is illustrated by the following incident 
which happened recently in the writer's ex- 
perience: At the conclusion of a chemistry 
lesson he was approached by one of his pupils, 
and asked whether he thought that in the days 
of Abraham there was more oxygen in the air 
than there is now, and would that account for 
the long lives of Abraham, Methuselah, and the 
patriarchs generally? The answer was, of 
course, simple, but the incident is of interest as 
showing that an intelligent boy could not keep 
what he had heard at home and in his Sunday- 
school apart from what he was taught in the 
school laboratory. 

(b) The Method of Reconciliation.—A survival, 
perhaps, of the days when it was thought 
necessary to “reconcile” all discrepant state- 
ments in Scripture. Thus, when Genesis vu. 17 
says that the flood lasted forty days, Genesis vii. 24 
says that it lasted one hundred and fifty days, 


RECONCILIATION INADVISABLE 49 


and Genesis vill. 13 implies a longer period still, 
commentators used to “ reconcile ”’ the diflerence 
either by saying that the greater number in- 
cluded the smaller, or by some other exercise of 
mathematical ingenuity. The modern ex- 
positor, knowing that the story of the flood im 
Genesis is pieced together from two distinct 
narratives, does not attempt to reconcile the 
discrepancy, but says the compiler of Genesis, 
finding difierent statements as to the length 
of the flood in his authorities, and feeling unable 
to decide between them, gave both statements, 
just as a modern historian would do. 

Again, when it is stated in one place that 
David paid fifty shekels of silver for the 
threshing-floor (2 Sam. xxiv. 24), and in another 
that the price was six hundred shekels of gold 
(1 Chron. xxi. 25), the two assertions have been 
harmonized by supposing that each of the twelve 
tribes paid fifty shekels, and so made up the 
six hundred; or that David paid the fifty shekels 
for the threshing-floor and oxen, and afterwards 
bought the entire estate for six hundred shekels 
of gold, neither of which suppositions is even 
hinted at in the sacred text. To-day we should 
have no hesitation in saying that the Books otf 
Chronicles, being much later in date, are less 
trustworthy authorities, and that, where there 
is a discrepancy between the very early Books 


50 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


of Samuel and the late Books of Chronicles, the 
earlier books are probably right. 

In the same way endeavours at harmonizing 
the teaching of science with statements in 
Scripture have been made. The story of creation 
in Genesis demands a period of six days, whereas 
geology demands an immense period of time, 
and attempts have been made to reconcile the 
two demands by saying that “days” mean 
“ages.” Again, the Bible regards the sky as 
consisting of a solid hemisphere called the 
firmament, which protected the earth from 
water-floods: “The sky, which is strong as a 
molten mirror ” (Job xxxvii. 18). We read that 
the flood was caused by windows being opened 
in the heaven (Gen. vii. 11, and viii. 2), through 
which the waters poured. Science, of course, 
teaches something very different as to the 
position of the stars in the sky and the nature 
of the upper atmosphere, and the attempted 
reconciliation—that the word “‘ firmament,’’ itself 
implying something firm or solid, only means 
the air—does not sound very convincing. 

Such methods of reconciliation are mischievous, 
because they distract attention from the Christian 
interpretation of the Old Testament; they are, 
moreover, unnecessary, as will be seen when 
the purpose of the Bible and the right principles 
of its interpretation are grasped. 


SCRIPTURE TEACHES RELIGION 51 


Il. GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 


It is impossible to deal with every case of 
discrepancy between the Bible and_ science 
within the limits of a single essay, but if 
certain general principles are laid down and 
applied to one or two cases, the reader can 
himself apply them to others. 

The general principles which must be borne 
in mind, if a right view of the relations between 
biblical and scientific knowledge are to be held, 
are three in number, and concern the purpose 
of the Bible, the nature of inspiration, and the 
nature of the revelation contained in the Bible. 


Purpose of the Buble. 
1. The Bible is a religious book. Its purpose 


is not to teach science, but to teach religion. It 
tells us about God and our duties towards Him. 
Its writers took the learning and science of the 
day, subordinated them to that end, and made 
them teach men some truth about God, just as 
a modern preacher will sometimes use an illus- 
tration from current science to reinforce his 
message. The science may grow out of date, 
but the religious lesson does not. Similarly, 
the biblical writers took the old national tradi- 
tions and songs that we find in the Book of 
Judges, re-edited them, and made them tell us 


52 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


some religious truth. In the later books they 
took the national records (what we should call 
history), and interpreted it from a religious point 
of view. Parts of the old traditions may have 
no basis in fact, but the religion that they 
teach is true; parts of the biblical historical 
records may prove to be faulty in details, but the 
Bible’s religious interpretation of history is valid 
for all ages. No biblical writer ever regarded 
himself as a man ordained to teach natural 
science, nor does the New Testament regard the 
Old Testament as an encyclopzedia of information 
on every subject. Speaking of the Old Testa- 
ment, St. Paul says (2 Tim. i. 15): “ The sacred 
writings which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 
Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable 
for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for w- 
struction which is in righteousness.” ‘The purpose 
of the Scriptures is here stated to be for in- 
struction in faith and morals. There is not a 
hint of a claim that Scripture is meant to teach 
anything else. 


The Nature of Inspiration. 

2. It is not the printed word of the book that 
is Inspired, but the soul of the writer. The 
man himself is inspired to see some new truth, 
or to revive an old one that has been forgotten, 


PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 53 


and if we wish to enquire into the inspiration of 
Scripture we must enquire into the inspiration of 
the prophets, using the word in its widest sense 
of all those men and women who have proclaimed 
religious truth to the world. On examining the 
written records about them, it is as obvious as 
anything can be that the inspiration of a prophet 
did not destroy his individuality nor make him 
incapable of error. He was not sent into a 
trance to utter divine words that were not his; 
he chose his own words to express the truth that 
God had planted in his heart. Amos, for in- 
stance, was inspired to see the truth that God 
was a Judge, and would visit even His chosen 
people with punishment. If Israel did not 
reverence the Creator, nor behave with justice 
and charity to men, then the divine powers 
would raise up Assyrians to chastise even the 
holy people. When opposed by the official 
priest of Bethel, he prophesied a speedy Judgment 
on both priest and people: “ Thy sons and thy 
daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land 
shall be divided by line; and thou thyself shalt 
die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall 
surely be led away captive out of his land” 
(Amos vii. 17). Evidently Amos expected that 
the judgment would take place in the priest's 
own lifetime, whereas the captivity of the 
northern kingdom did not occur for another two 


54. THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


generations. The prophet’s historical foresight 
was inaccurate, but his religion was right. The 
article which he added to the creed, “ God is 
Judge,”’ was true. Just as the divine influence 
which made Newton see the law of gravitation 
did not make him an infallible authority on all 
topics, so the inspiration which guided the great 
men of the Bible to see new truth about God 
did not make, and was never intended to make, 
them incapable of error in science, politics, or 
other mundane afiairs. 


The Revelation of the Bible. 


3. The third principle is that laid down by 
Westcott. It is that the Bible is not in itself 
a revelation, but the record of a revelation. 
It tells us how God revealed Himself progres- 
sively from age to age, until that revelation 
culminated in the coming of Jesus Christ. The 
work of biblical critics, in spite of occasional 
extravagances, has done us immense service 
in elucidating the progress of this revelation by 
making clear what is the chronological order of 
the writings of the Bible. Under their guidance 
we can briefly summarize the main stages of the 
religious advance as recorded in the Scriptures. 

(1) Abraham withdrew from association 
with human sacrifice and began to serve one 


God. 


REVELATION PROGRESSIVE 5D 


(2) Moses, many centuries later, intro- 
duced a moral law into religion. 

(3) The prophets taught men to make 
religion an affair of the heart, and to banish 
conventionalism from the service of God. 

(4) The exile and its disasters turned the 
Jews into strict monotheists. 

(5) In the latest books of the Old Testa- 
ment we find growing the desire for personal 
communion with God, a sense of sin, and 
the need of atonement, and the idea of a 
Catholic religion which would overleap the 
boundaries of Judaism. 

(6) Finally, thousands of years after 
Abraham, Jesus Christ comes to make real 
communion with God possible, to deal 
effectively with sin, and to found a universal 
Church. 


The Bible is the record of these great stages in 
religious advance, which came by the inspirations 
given to gifted men in order that mankind might 
have knowledge of God and His will. 


ILI]. ParTICULAR CASES. 


Having stated the fundamental laws of 
Scripture interpretation, we can apply them to 
some special cases of discrepancy between the 
Bible and science. 


D6 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


(a) The Story of Creation im Genesis—In 
accordance with the first principle laid down, 
we must ask the question: “ What religious 
message does this story teach ?’”” Answers come 
crowding thick and fast. It teaches that the 
universe is the creation of God, the expression 
of His will; that it is something separate and 
distinct from Him, and that in His sight it is 
good. The story tells us also something of 
the nature of man, that he is the crown and 
climax of creation, that he was made so that 
he knew God naturally; he was made to be 
religious. 

In teaching the story to children who have 
learned something of physical geography and 
the solar system, the teacher might explain 
what was a Jewish boy’s idea of the earth and 
sky in the year 100 B.c.; how he regarded the 
earth as immovably fixed on foundations 
(Ps. civ. 5), as having a solid firmament above 
it on which the heavenly bodies moved; how he 
thought there were waters above the firmament; 
and how, finally, he regarded God as enthroned 
above all. ‘The Lord sitteth above the water- 
flood: the Lord remaineth a king for ever” 
(Ps. xxix. 9). Then the teacher may ask, 
“Was the Jewish boy’s physical geography 
correct ?’’ and the answer will be “No.” Then 
he may put the query, “ Was his religion right 2?” 


APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES = 57 


and the answer will be “ Yes. He knew that God 
was exalted above all created things.” 

(6) The Story of Jonah and the Great Fish_— 
Here, again, the religious message is so obvious 
that we can only marvel how men can have 
wasted their time in trying to discover what 
kinds of fish have gullets large enough to swallow 
aman. ‘The story is a magnificent missionary 
lesson telling us of God’s love for the heathen 
Ninevites, of Jonah’s wicked pride as a Jew in 
not wanting foreigners to be saved, of how God’s 
will triumphs in spite of man’s rebellion, and 
in the last chapter tells a very human story of 
Jonah’s mental reaction after the success of his 
preaching, and of how God deals with it. 

The writer’s biological knowledge was dis- 
tinctly imaginative rather than accurate, but 
his knowledge of religion and human nature can 
hardly be surpassed. 


* * K K *f 


Finally, the significance of the principle that 
the Bible is the record of a revelation must be 
dwelt on in its relation to science. It will be 
seen at once that religion had a humble origin, 
that man’s early ideas of God were crude and 
like those of a modern child who imagines God 
in his simple, artless way to be a larger edition 
of a man like his own father, and that very long 


58 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


ages of time elapsed while primitive notions were 
being improved. Scripture testifies that the 
first man was in a low state of spiritual develop- 
ment; he had not the discriminating knowledge 
of good and evil. Anthropology reveals to us 
the immense age of human life on this planet; 
between the first man to whom was revealed the 
idea of God and Abraham countless centuries 
must have elapsed, and the time between 
Abraham and Jesus Christ must be measured in 
thousands of years. The slowness of religious 
progress need not be considered as a stumbling- 
block, for biology will come to our rescue, saying 
that this conception of religion is consonant with 
what the science of life teaches. The spiritual 
side of man, as well as the physical, developed 
from small origins. Psychology will step in as 
well and say how imperative it is that man should 
have started with rudimentary ideas of God, 
to be improved in the slow process of time as his 
mental power grew. 

In these three principles, which are necessary 
for the right understanding of the relations 
between the Bible and science, there is nothing 
repugnant either to what Scripture says of itself 
or to Church tradition. No special view of the 
inspiration of Scripture has ever been laid down 
by a General Council, no theory of its verbal 
inspiration making every word and sentence of 


CHURCH TRADITION 59 


equal value, no theory of plenary inspiration 
(v.e., an inspiration which covers all subjects 
treated of) has ever been made binding on the 
Christian conscience. On the question of the 
literal accuracy of every sentence, of the literal 
truth of every story related in the Bible, the 
official Church is silent. And when we reflect 
that at one time the majority of Christians 
accepted without question as literally true all 
statements in the Bible, we cannot avoid the 
conclusion that in her silences, as well as her 
utterances, the Church has been guided by 
the Holy Spirit. 


IV 


THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE OLD 
TESTAMENT 


By R. H. KENNETT, D.D. 


in 


It will be admitted by all who are familiar with 
the thought of the present age that on no subject 
is it more important that the Christian Church 
should know and speak its own mind than on 
the Old Testament. On the one hand, many 
who are hostile to Christianity imagine that in 
the Old Testament—not only as regards its 
historical and scientific statements, but also in 
the more important matters of its morality and 
theology—they have discovered a vulnerable 
point at which they can aim a death-blow to 
Christianity itself; and, on the other, there are 
not a few Christians who, while acknowledging 
Jesus as Lord and Saviour, are sorely perplexed 
to reconcile His teaching with the Scriptures, on - 
which they believe Him to have set His seal. 

At the outset, therefore, it will be well to 
enquire what was the attitude of Jesus to the 


Old Testament. If He corroborated all itg 
60 


CHRIST AND THE LAW 61 


statements, it 1s obvious that a Christian cannot 
criticize or repudiate a single one without under- 
mining His authority; while, on the other hand, 
if Jesus Himself criticized or repudiated some of 
its teaching, those who endeavour to maintain it 
as a whole are disloyal to Him. 

It must, of course, be remembered that biblical 
criticism, as the term is understood nowadays, 
did not exist in the time of Jesus. There were, 
indeed, disputes as to the meaning of various 
passages in the law, and rival schools of inter- 
pretation; but the authority and permanent 
value of the law was unchallenged, and the 
question of its authorship or of its absolute 
inerrancy had never been raised. Jesus, there- 
fore, was never asked His opinion about what 
we should call the Higher Criticism, and we can 
only discover His attitude towards the Old 
Testament by comparing His teaching on various 
matters with the statements therein contained. 
It has, indeed, often been supposed that at least 
on one occasion Jesus used language so clear 
and emphatic about the authority of the Old 
Testament as to make any further investigation 
unnecessary. Hor in St. Matthew v.17/. He is 
reported to have said, “ Think not that I came 
to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not 
to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto 
you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot 


62 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, 
till all things be accomplished.” It may be well 
to point out here that the ‘“‘Sermon on the 
Mount,” from which the above quotation is 
taken, does not represent a discourse all delivered 
at one time, but is a collection of sayings of Jesus 
which were doubtless uttered on various occa- 
sions during His ministry. We cannot even 
assume that verse 18 had originally any connec- 
tion with the preceding verse. Indeed, the fact 
that, whereas verse 17 mentions both “ the law 
and the prophets,” verse 18 mentions only “ the 
law,” rather points to the original independence 
of the two sayings. It is not impossible that 
the Evangelist placed the latter immediately 
after the former simply because it also con- 
tained a reference to the law.* We must there- 

* Both in the Prophets and in the Gospels the arrange- 
ment is frequently not in accordance with any logical or 
chronological principle, but is one which was natural 
enough to those who were trained in oral tradition—that 
is to say, it is based on the merely mechanical method of 
placing in juxtaposition passages which contain certain 
outstanding words or topics. Thus, for example, the first 
and second paragraphs of the book of Isaiah are not in 
chronological order, for the second is the earlier of the two. 
The catchwords which have caused them to be placed 
together are “Sodom” and ‘‘ Gomorrah.” Similarly, 
Isaiah ii. 1-4, 5, and 6 ff., are arranged together because they 
contain the words ‘“‘ house’’ and ‘‘ Jacob”’ (see verses 3, 5, 
and 6); Isaiah v. 1-7 and 8-10 are arranged together because 


MEANING OF “ FULFIL ” 63 


fore consider the meaning of each verse by itself. 
In verse 17 the interpretation turns on the 
meaning of the word “fulfil.” What did Jesus 
mean by “ fulfilling ” the law and the prophets ? 
It is important to remember that the Greek word 
here translated “‘ fulfil’ is also used in the New 
Testament with reference to concrete things, 
where the rendering “ fulfil’? would be quite 
unsuitable. It is used, for example, of filling a 
fishing net (St. Matt. xii. 48) and a ravine 
(St. Luke in. 5). It is scarcely possible in 
English to adopt a uniform translation, but in 
general the Greek word might be rendered “ to 
make full.”’ Jesus therefore protested that He 
did not want to destroy the law and the prophets, 
but to make them full; and we must accordingly 
examine His teaching, where it 1s concerned with 
matters which are also treated of in the law and 
the prophets, in order to discover what He meant 


they contain the word “vineyard ”’; the following para- 
graphs, 11-17, 18-19, 20-21, 22 ff., come next because they 
begin with the word “ woe.” So St. Mark ix. 49, which has 
no logical connection with the preceding verse, stands after — 
it because it contains the word “ fire,’’ and 50 follows 49 
because it refers to ‘“‘salt.”’ Similarly, in St. Luke xiv. 
the paragraphs 7-11, 12-14, 15-24 are arranged together 
because they all contain some reference to a meal, and in 
the case of the last two, “ the poor, the maimed, the lame, 
and the blind,” are mentioned both in verse 13 and in 
verse 21. 


64 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


by the assertion. Did He mean to “ make full” 
every statement of the law and the prophets, 
or to “ make full ” only that which was capable 
of development in accordance with the highest 
teaching by separating it from that which could 
not be so developed, and was in itself mischievous 
or misleading ? It will be convenient to consider 
Jesus’ attitude towards the law and the pro- 
phets under five heads in relation to (1) history, 
(2) morality, (3) religious ritual, (4) theology, 
(5) national hopes. In respect to each of these 
Jesus made the most definite statements, which 
are found to be quite incompatible with the 
supposition that He set His seal upon every- 
thing contamed in the law and the prophets. 
Let us, then, consider them in order. 

1. History —tn Genesis 11. 2, 3, and Exodus xx. 
11 it is asserted that after six days of creative 
activity God “ rested ” on the seventh day. It 
is to be noted, however, that the Hebrew word 
here translated “rested ” is quite distinct from 
that which is similarly rendered in Deuteronomy 
v. 14 (“that thy manservant and thy maid- 
servant may rest as well as thou’’). It means 
“to be inactive,” “ to be at a standstill,” and it 
is the word which is translated “‘ ceased ” in the 
sentence, “How hath the oppressor ceased ” 
(Isa. xiv. 4). How, then, does the teaching of 
Jesus agree with the statement that God “ ab- 


CHRIST AND THE SABBATH 65 


stained from activity ”’ or “was at a standstill” 
on the seventh day ; or with the injunction 
based upon that statement, that on the Sabbath 
day there must be abstention from activity, that 
work must be at a standstill ? 

It is evident from several passages in the 
Gospels that Jesus’ attitude towards the Sabbath 
differed widely from that of His contemporaries. 
He affirmed that “the Sabbath was made for 
man, and not man for the Sabbath ” (St. Mark 
ii. 27); He healed on the Sabbath day a man with 
a withered hand, who was not in pain, and who 
could have waited another twenty-four hours 
(St. Mark iii.1-5). But He went further; He told 
the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda on the 
Sabbath day to arise and take up his bed and 
walk; and when He was persecuted by the Jews 
for thus breaking the Sabbath, He defended 
Himself, not by affirming that what He had done 
and had caused to be done was not work, but 
by appealing to the precedent of God Himself, 
Who, He declared, had never ceased from work: 
“My Father worketh even until now, and I 
work” (St. John v. 8-17). It is evident that 
the Evangelist, in relating this incident, means 
us to understand that the teaching of Jesus 
involved a denial of one of the most definite 
and solemn historical statements of the law. 
But if Jesus denied the account, contained in 


66 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


the law, of God’s abstention from activity on 
the seventh day of what the law represents as the 
first week, is there any reason to suppose that 
He must necessarily have “ fulfilled,’ ‘“ made 
full,” the previous account of God’s activity 
on the preceding six days? Clearly, in “ making 
full”’ the law He did not corroborate all its 
statements about historical events. 

It is undoubtedly a fact, however, that the 
Old Testament writers themselves had little 
interest in history as the word is understood 
nowadays, and that they cared for the traditions 
of the past more on account of their value as 
parables to inculcate certain lessons than on 
account of their historical truth; and it may 
reasonably be contended, therefore, that in re- 
pudiating an historical statement Jesus was not, 
alter all, setting any startlingly new precedent. 
We may, therefore, consider His attitude to the 
law under the next heading. 

2. Moral Teaching —Here it is important to 
note that the same Evangelist who hag recorded 
Jesus’ words about “ making full” the law has 
recorded other sayings which are a direct repudia- 
tion of some portions of its moral teaching. 
“ Ye have heard that it was said to them of 
old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but 
shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I 
say unto you, Swear not at all” (St. Matt. v. 


MORAL TEACHING OF THE LAW 67 


33, 34). Here Jesus not only goes beyond those 
passages of the law which forbid false swearing— 
e.g., Leviticus xix. 12 (cf. Exodus xx. 7)—He 
sets aside those passages which require that 
people shall swear by Jehovah’s name only— 
e.g., Deuteronomy vi. 13, x. 20. It is surely a 
misuse of language to ne a prohibition of all 
swearing a “ fulfilling ’ or “ making full” of an 
Injunction to swear By Jehovah! But St. 
Matthew has recorded (v. 43, 44) an even more 
striking instance of the setting aside of the law 
by Jesus: “Ye have heard that it was said, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate 
thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your 
enemies.” It is true the actual words, “ Thou 
shalt hate thine enemy,” are not found in the 
law; it cannot be denied, however, that they 
are a perfectly correct summing up of such 
passages as Deuteronomy xxiii. 2-6, xxv. 17-19. 
It is a curious mental perversity which can find 
in the words “Love your enemies” a “ ful- 
filling ” of the injunction, ‘‘ Thou shalt not seek 
their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for 
ever.” further, according to St. Mark (x. 5), 

in response to the Pharisees’ statement Bo 
Moses suffered a man to write a bill of divorce- 
ment and to put away his wife, Jesus retorted, 
~ For your hardness of heart he wrote you this 
commandment.” Did He desire to “ make 


68 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


full’ a commandment originally given only 
because of the hardness of men’s hearts ? 

3. Religious Ritual—What, then, we may 
ask, was Jesus’ attitude towards the religious 
ritual of the law and its kindred injunctions % 
It will be remembered that the law lays down 
the most stringent regulations as to what food 
is to be regarded as clean and what as unclean. 
See, for example, Leviticus x1., Deuteronomy 
xiv. 1-21. But Jesus declared (St. Mark vu. 
18 f.) that “whatsoever from without goeth 
into the man, it cannot defile him, because 1t 
goeth not into his heart, but into his belly.” 
That is to say, according to Jesus, in themselves 
all meats are clean, and it matters not whether 
an animal slaughtered for food chews the cud 
and parts the hoof or not. Meat cannot defile, 
and therefore the teaching of Jesus makes null 
and void such injunctions as Leviticus vii. 19-27. 
It must not be overlooked that the sacrificial 
laws are so closely bound up with the laws 
concerning cleanness and uncleanness that a 
repudiation of the latter must seriously afiect 
the attitude towards the former. 

St. John (vii. 1-24) implies on the part of Jesus 
at least a disparagement of an even more im- 
portant injunction of the law. The making 
of a man every whit whole on the Sabbath by 
Jesus is evidently contrasted with the wounding 


THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF THE LAW 69 


in circumcision, also performed on the Sabbath, 
in order to conform to the law. 

4. Theology.—tIn regard to the theology of the 
law—that is to say, the teaching about God 
which is found in many parts of it—the teaching 
of Jesus is equally uncompromising. It is not 
only that Christian doctrine (e.g., St. John iv. 24) 
makes impossible the acceptance of such crude 
anthropomorphisms* as are found, for example, 
in Genesis iii. 8, Exodus xxiv. 10, 11; the 
character of God, as set forth by Jesus, differs 
wholly from that conception which is found in 
many parts of the law, and, indeed, in much 
of the Old Testament. The central point in the 
teaching of Jesus is the Fatherhood of God, and 
He appeals to the best instincts of human father- 
hood (see, for example, St. Matthew vii. 9-11) 
to enable His hearers to understand the character 
of the Heavenly Father (cf. St. Luke xv. 11-32). 
But such teaching stands in sharp contradiction 
to the idea of God found in more than one passage 
of the law, which regards Him as giving way to 
paroxysms of anger, and as needing to be ap- 
peased with offerings (¢f., e.g., Numbers xvi. 44-49). 

* It is important to distinguish between expressions 
which imply a really crude conception of God and those 
which are obviously merely metaphorical, which neither 
the author nor his original readers ever dreamed of taking 


literally. To the latter belong such utterances as Psalm 
xliv. 23 (cf. Psalm exxi. 4). 


70 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Further, whereas in the law, and, indeed, in 
nearly the whole of the Old Testament, every 
sort of disaster whatsoever is regarded as due 
to a withdrawal of the divine favour, Jesus 
emphatically declares that suffermg is not 
necessarily to be attributed to any such cause 
(St. Luke xiii. 1-5, St. John ix. 1-3). 

5. National Hopes.—In regard to the national 
hopes of His people, the teaching of Jesus shows 
a wide divergence from many parts of the law 
and the prophets. Almost throughout the Old 
Testament Israel is regarded as standing in a 
special relation to Jehovah, and as receiving 
from Him favour which is not bestowed upon 
the Gentiles. See, for example, such passages 
as Deuteronomy xv. 1-6, xx. 10-18. Similarly, 
Jehovah is represented as not caring whether the 
Gentiles do the things which are required of 
Israel or not (cf. Deuteronomy xiv. 21). But the 
teaching of Jesus, though originally addressed 
to Jews, burst the bonds of Judaism, and is 
correctly summed up in St. Matthew xxviii. 19; 
howbeit, the Evangelist has probably given here, 
not the ipsissima verba of Jesus, but what he 
rightly believed to be the will of the risen Lord. 

In view of the facts considered above, it is 
clearly impossible to maintain that it was the 
purpose of Jesus to “ fulfil,” to “ make full,” 
every part of the law and of the prophets. 


“ FULFILMENT” OF THE LAW 71 


What sort of “ fulfilment,” then, did He con- 
template ? Now some years before He bégan 
to preach the Rabbi Hillel, who lived till Jesus 
was about twelve years old, and who may 
actually have talked with Him on the occasion 
of the visit to the temple recorded in St. Luke ii. 
41-51, had summed up the law to an impatient 
Gentile inquirer as follows: “ What is hateful to 
thyself, that do not thou to thy neighbour, 
This is the whole law; all the rest is commen- 
tary.” Hillel’s heart in respect of this saying 
was better than his head. ‘ Thou shalt not seek 
their peace nor their prosperity for ever ”’ cannot 
be a commentary upon “Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself.’’ There can be little doubt, 
however, that the saying of Jesus recorded in 
St. Matthew vi. 12 is an adaptation of Hillel’s 
dictum; and the account given in St. Mark xu. 
28-34 makes it clear that in the mind of Jesus 
the two essential commandments of the law 
are those which inculcate love to God and man 
(Deut. vi. 5; Lev. xix. 18). These two com- 
mandments He made the touchstone to apply 
to all the rest. That which was in agreement 
with them was to be “ made full’; that which 
was contrary to them was to be pruned away, 
that it might not interfere with the development 
of that which was capable of “ fulfilment.” H, 
therefore, as we must infer from the sayings which 


72 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


the Evangelists have preserved, Jesus affirmed 
that the law which He had come to “ make 
full *’ meant all that was in harmony with the 
two great commandments, the saying recorded 
in St. Matthew v. 18 is in perfect agreement with 
the rest of His teaching. Even one of the 
apparently least important commandments, if a 
embodied the principle of love towards God and 
man, could not lightly be set aside. 

It will thus be evident that Jesus was the first 
Higher Critic. Those who treat the whole of 
the Old Testament as on one level of inspiration 
are not loyal to His teaching, but disloyal. Asa 
matter of fact, they reject the Gospel in favour 
of Pharisaism. 


If. 


We have seen that, according to the teaching 
of Jesus, the Old Testament contains some 
passages which are capable of infinite develop- 
ment in the light of the highest truth, and some 
which are incompatible with that truth. It 
would be a mistake, however, to include all the 
latter under one category. There are some 
things which are wholly false, and there are 
others which contain an important element of 
truth, but truth so mixed with alloy that the 
effect is harmful rather than good—at least, in an 


OLD TESTAMENT INCOMPLETENESS 73 


age of higher spiritual development. It is some- 
times contended by those who desire to maintain 
the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture that, 
although certain passages of the Old Testament 
are incomplete, every passage is free from error 
as far as it goes. But freedom from error ig 
incompatible with incompleteness. The maxim 
that “nature abhors a vacuum ” is just as true 
in regard to matters intellectual or spiritual as in 
matters physical. If a man does not possess 
the whole truth, he will inevitably combine such 
truth as he does possess with error to fill up the 
gap; and according to the proportion of truth 
the result will be mainly good or mainly evil. 
Thus, for example, there can be no progress in 
human society till the principle of Justice is 
recognized; but true justice cannot be done 
unless it be administered in accordance with 
some understanding of, and some sympathy for, 
human nature. A mere mechanical application 
of the lex talionis—a giving of tit for tat—will, 
in many cases, not be justice at all, but a clumsy 
vindictiveness. Again, individualism is a late 
development in the progress of human thought. 
Whereas with us the unit is the individual, 
among primitive races the individual is scarcely 
taken into account, the family or clan being 
regarded as essentially one. By many of the 
more backward peoples of the world at the present 


74 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


time all Europeans are regarded as forming 
practically one whole; the ‘‘ untutored savage,” 
therefore, considers it perfectly just and right 
to avenge himself on any European who may 
come in his way for a wrong inflicted upon him 
by another. Hence, in ancient Palestine the 
execution of seven descendants of Saul for a 
wrong done by Saul to the Gibeonites would 
not shock the ideas of justice held by the great 
majority of the nation. Probably even the 
innocent men who suffered would not dispute 
the justice of the sentence. In this and in 
many other stories of the Old Testament the 
discriminating reader, while recognizing the 
superiority of the precept in Deuteronomy 
xxiv. 16, may yet discern an element of justice, 
though the justice is rendered almost entirely 
null through the absence of that individualism 
which to our way of thinking is all-important. 
The above will serve as an illustration of 
many passages in the Old Testament where the 
incompleteness of the truth causes, indeed, serious 
error, but where, in spite of the error, the truth 
is not entirely obliterated. There are, however, 
other passages which are wholly erroneous, or in 
which the germ of truth is discoverable only 
by a student of comparative religion and of 
primitive thought, such as the law which enjoins, 
or at least sanctions, the sacrifice of the first- 


HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE 15 


born (Exod. xxii. 29 f.; cf. Gen. xxii. 2), the trial 
by ordeal (Num. v. 11 ff.), the wrestling of Jacob 
with God (Gen. xxxii. 24-30), the belief that 
Samson’s strength lay in his hair (J udg. Xili.-xvi.), 
ete. SirJ.G. Frazer has familiarized our genera- 
tion with the idea that the Old Testament 
contains folklore. It remains to be shown how 
this folklore came to be combined with Scriptures 
which Jesus declared that it was His mission to 
“ make full.” 

Now, although the Old Testament was not 
intended primarily to teach history, it will not 
be intelligible as a whole apart from the study 
of history. It is only when we know of what 
elements Israel was composed, and what events 
and what environment moulded its character, 
that we are in a position to understand the Old 
Testament and to estimate its value. 


ITI. 


The history of Israel begins with the deliver- 
ance from the Egyptian bondage. It is to that 
great event that the prophets appeal as the 
beginning of Israel’s peculiar relation to Jehovah. 
Not that the narratives contained in the Book 
of Genesis are all devoid of historical value, nor 
that we can entirely reconstruct the history of 


the period subsequent to the exodus. It is fre- 
7 


76 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


quently difficult to decide whether a name denotes 
an individual or a tribe, and even more difficult 
to determine the exact chronological order of the 
events recorded and their precise relation to one 
another; but we can at least sketch in outline 
the history of Israel from the exodus onward 
with a tolerable degree of probability, whereas 
any reconstruction of the history of the pre- 
ceding age is extremely uncertain. 

It was believed by the authors of the earliest 
portions of the Old Testament that the ancestors 
of the Israelites had lived in Palestine before 
settling in the land of Egypt; but even if this 
belief was well founded, there is no evidence that 
the tradition of the reputed ancestors of Israel 
was preserved during the Egyptian sojourn; it 1s, 
indeed, more probable that it was only relearnt 
after the conquest of Palestine from the Canaan- 
ites, who worshipped at the holy places which the 
patriarchs were said to have founded. In other 
words, the stories of the patriarchs came to Israel 
through a Canaanite channel, and, whatever 
they were originally, they have been coloured by 
Canaanite tradition. 

From the evidence at present available it 
seems probable that the exodus from Egypt took 
place in the last quarter of the thirteenth century 
B.c. The exact date is, however, of compara- 
tively little importance; the essential fact is that 


THE PROPHETS AND THE LAW 77 


certain clans of a nomad race known as Hebrews, 
on whom some of the Pharaohs had imposed 
forced labour, broke away from Egypt under the 
leadership of Moses, and returned to their 
nomadic life in the oases of the desert south of 
Palestine. The accounts of this period in the 
Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and 
Deuteronomy are coloured by the thought of a 
much later age, when the fusion of Israelites and 
Canaanites was almost complete. In the utter- 
ances of the great pre-exilic prophets, however, 
we find references to a tradition of the sojourn 
in the wilderness in many respects widely 
different. Thus, whereas a large part of the 
Pentateuch is wholly concerned with the ritual 
of the tabernacle, the prophets of the eighth and 
seventh centuries B.c. assert that in the wilder- 
ness there was no sacrifice, and that the religion 
of Jehovah which Israel* there learnt was con- 
cerned solely with justice and mercy and truth. 
The provenance and the original meaning of the 
name which we know as Jehovah (properly 
Jahveh, shortened Jah, as in hallelu-jah) is un- 
certain. Two of the Pentateuchal documents— 
viz., those commonly denoted by the symbols 

* For clearness’ sake those whom Moses led in the wilder- 
ness are called here Israelites. It is, however, possible 


that the name Israel was not assumed before the conquest 
of eastern Palestine. 


78 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


and P—represent it as first revealed to Moses. 
The Judean document J, on the other hand, 
states that the invocation of God by this name 
originated in very early times (Gen. iv. 26). It 
is possible that the name came from the eastern 
side of the great Syrian desert, and that it took 
root in southern Palestine some centuries before 
the exodus. It may be that Jehovah was wor- 
shipped among the Kenites and other tribes who 
occupied the wilderness to the south of the land 
of Canaan, and that during the stay at Kadesh 
Barnea Moses adopted it as the name of the God 
of the people whom he led. On these points it is 
impossible at present to arrive at any certain 
conclusion. ‘The origin of the name, however, is 
of merely antiquarian interest. The outstanding 
fact 1s that Moses associated with the name ideas 
which, so far as we know, were not at that time 
associated with any other deity. Certainly the 
patriarchal conception of Jehovah and of the 
essentials of His religion—at least, as indicated 
in the Jahvistic document of the Pentateuch— 
was very different from the tradition of Israelite 
religion in the wilderness to which the prophets 
appeal. That tradition entirely ignores all 
ritual obligation, expressly asserting that sacri- 
fice was not offered during the sojourn in the 
wilderness. In one important matter, indeed, 
the Pentateuch itself and the allied book of 


UNCIRCUMCISION OF ISRAELITES 79 


Joshua have preserved traditions startlingly at 
variance with the priestly law. Moses himself 
had never received circumcision, and those whom 
he led who were born in the wilderness were 
uncircumcised (Exod. iv. 24-26; Josh. v. 5)—a 
fact which can only mean that Moses rejected 
the rite, since there would have been nothing 
to prevent its performance at Kadesh Barnea. 
This tradition of the non-circumcision of Moses 
and the Israelites in the wilderness is of great 
importance as proving that the religion which 
Moses taught his people was not derived from 
Egypt. If Moses’ religion had been learnt by 
him in Egypt, he and his people would all have 
been circumcised, for the Egyptians practised 
circumcision.* 

It is not easy to form an exact idea of the 
religion of which Moses was the exponent. It is 
to be noted, however, that the prophets believed 
themselves to have preserved the true tradition 
of it, and that they repudiated as something 
extraneous the popular religion of their time 
which in many respects has found expression in 
the laws of the Pentateuch. They were not 
merely henotheists or monolaters, but mono- 


* The text of Jeremiah iv. 4, ix. 25, 26 has perhaps come 
down to us not quite in its original form. It is not im- 
possible that Jeremiah rejected circumcision as an ordinance 
of Jehovah. 


80 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


theists—that is to say, they believed Jehovah 
to be the God of the whole world. Probably 
none of them would have called the Moabites 
“sons and daughters of Chemosh,” as does the 
poet of Numbers xx1. 29. This monotheism was 
not derived from Egypt. 

In another respect also the religion, or at any 
rate the ethics, of the prophets would seem to 
have differed from that of the majority of the 
population of Palestine. There is not a hint in 
any of the prophets, whether pre-exilic or post- 
exilic, to suggest that they approved of polyg- 
amy, and there are several passages which imply 
monogamy. Here, again, it 1s probable that the 
prophets’ ideas about marriage belong to the 
general tradition of what was learnt in the 
wilderness—in other words, the teaching of Moses. 

But this brings us to the question, ““ Whence 
had this man this wisdom ?” and it is a question 
to which those who deny all inspiration will find 
it hard to give an answer. Moses did not learn his 
doctrine from Egypt,* nor from the rude tribes 
of the wilderness. It has sometimes been sup- 
posed that he learnt the religion of Jehovah 

* A negative proof of the complete independence of the 
religions of Israel and of Egypt is the absence from the 
former of any idea of a future life and of a judgment to 
come. Hven among the highest teachers in Israel down to 


the post-exilic period there is no hint of a doctrine of a 
future life. 


ISRAELITE INVASION OF CANAAN 81 


from the priest of Midian; but at all events 
this was not the belief of the writer of Exodus 
xvi. 11. 

The people whom Moses led were by no means 
as numerous as the authors of the latest sections 
of the Pentateuch imagined, and probably they 
did not number more than a few thousands. 
After a sojourn in the wilderness, which tradition 
estimated as lasting forty years—.e., a genera- 
tion—an attempt was made, probably in con- 
junction with other nomadic tribes, to gain a 
settlement in the cultivable land of Palestine. 
At this time the Egyptian rule over the Canaan- 
ites was at an end, and from various quarters 
invaders were pressing forward, anxious to 
possess themselves of a country which in that 
age appeared so desirable. Before the death of 
Moses Israel had found a settlement in eastern 
Palestine between the Arnon and the Jabbok, 
and after his death an attack, or, more probably, 
9 series of attacks, was made on the country 
west of the Jordan. The invaders made little 
progress in the valleys, where the Canaanites were 
able to employ cavalry; but at length, after hard 
fighting, they established themselves firmly on 
the mountain range which forms the backbone 
of western Palestine. For some time, as in 
England after the Saxon invasion, the land 
appears to have been divided up under a number 


82 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


of petty chieftains. Here the Israelites pre- 
dominated, there the Canaanites. By 1000 B.c., 
however, Israelites and Canaanites were united 
under one king, and the Israelite conquest had 
been so far successful that the name of Israel 
was applied to the whole people, and the God 
whom the Israelites called Jehovah was regarded 
as the national God. The fusion of Canaanites 
and Israelites was greatly expedited by the need 
of making common cause against other invaders 
of the country, prominent among whom were the 
Philistines. The fusion was, however, greatly 
facilitated by the fact that the pre-Israelite 
inhabitants of the land of Canaan were in the 
main of Semitic stock, and spoke a language 
closely akin to that of the invaders. 

In material culture and in religion, however, 
Israel and Canaan differed greatly. Before the 
Egyptian supremacy in Palestine the country 
had been subject to Babylonia, and the Canaanite 
civilization was mainly Babylonian. Many ele- 
ments of Babylonian religion and mythology had 
also taken root in Palestine, such as the story 
of the flood, etc. It ig possible that some 
points of resemblance between the laws em- 
bedded in the Pentateuch and the ancient 
Babylonian code of Hammurabi, which are not 
very humerous, may be due to this early Baby- 
lonian influence on Canaan. Since, however, 


EARLY RELIGION OF CANAAN _ 83 


Babylonians were transported to Palestine in the 
seventh century B.c. (see 2 Kings xvii. 24 ff.; 
Ezra iv.), it is possible, if the earlier documents 
of the Pentateuch took shape as late as this— 
which is on other grounds probable—that Baby- 
lonian customs exercised a direct influence on 
Israelite law. There is, however, no trace of 
Babylonian influence on the religion of the pre- 
exilic prophets. 

At the time of the Israelite conquest the 
Canaanites were nature worshippers, venerating 
a mother goddess Ashtoreth, and her male partner 
Baal—1z.e., Lord—besides other minor deities. 
Sacrifice, including human sacrifice, especially 
of the first-born, played an important part in 
their religion, and their sanctuaries, which were 
very numerous, resembled in some of their worst 
features, especially their personnel, certain Hindu 
temples at the present day. They practised 
circumcision, which was commonly performed 
in manhood, and they had numerous idols, some 
of which were of an obscene character. In some 
cases their kings, like the kings of Bunyoro in 
recent times, were priests; or perhaps it would 
be more correct to say that they were regarded 
as the embodiment of the tribal god to whom 
sacrifice was offered. 

_ It was scarcely possible that a people whose 
religious ideas were of such a character should 


84 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


accept at once the higher religion which the 
Israelites brought with them. The Canaanites 
were indeed compelled to acknowledge Jehovah 
as the God, or, as the Canaanites would have 
phrased it, the Baal of the land; but they 
ascribed to Him the attributes of the Canaanite 
Baal, continuing at their sanctuaries their 
ancestral worship, which was little changed 
except that it was ostensibly performed in 
honour of Jehovah. 

There can be little doubt that the Canaanite 
element in the nation was greatly in excess of 
the Israelite, and this being the case, we should 
expect to find the religion of the Israelite 
minority influenced by that of the majority. 
Some families doubtless preserved in a pure form 
the tradition of the teaching which Moses had 
given in the wilderness;* but probably many, 
though holding aloof from the worst of the 
Canaanite superstitions, would take over other 
practices which were equally foreign to the 
religion of Jehovah. It was almost inevitable 

* How long a time a section of the people could remain 
entirely apart from the religious observances of the majority 
is seen in the case of the Rechabites (2 Kings x. 15 f.; 
Jer. xxxv.). Since the Rechabites rejected agriculture, 
they could have taken no part in the great agricultural 
feasts—the only feasts which are obligatory in the earlier 


documents of the Pentateuch—viz., Unleavened Bread, 
Harvest, and Ingathering. 


REFORMS IN POPULAR RELIGION 8) 


that it should be so; for the Israelite nomads, 
when they took up agriculture, could only learn 
it from the Canaanites, and to the Canaanites 
certain ritual was as essential to agriculture as 
ploughing or sowing. 

But though the Israelite leaven was hidden in 
a great many measures of Canaanite meal, it had 
power enough gradually to leaven the lump. 
Sometimes a king, imbued with something of 
the old Israelite tradition, would make an effort 
to abolish the worst of the superstitions which 
had survived from Canaan. Such were Asa and 
Jehoshaphat. Sometimes a king naturally super- 
stitious or weak would yield to popular senti- 
ment, and there would be a recrudescence of the 
old abominations. But with few exceptions the 
Canaanite system of sacrifice held its ground, and 
the Canaanite feasts became the feasts of Jehovah. 

Nevertheless, we can trace certain definite 
stages in the progress of religion. In the ninth 
century B.c., under Jehu, the way was paved for 
monotheism by the prohibition of the worship 
in the land of Israel of any god other than 
Jehovah. In the eighth and seventh centuries 
B.o. an attack was made by the great prophets on 
the idols, on the system of sacrifice, and on the 
religious prostitution associated with that system 
at the various sanctuaries. The prophets were, 
indeed, unable to induce their people to abolish 


86 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


sacrifice; but their attack on its concomitant 
superstitions led in the seventh and sixth 
centuries to the limitation of it to one altar; 
and with the consequent diminution in the 
number of times when sacrifice was offered, it 
became easier to lay stress on the weightier 
matters, Justice and mercy and truth. Josiah’s 
reformation, which continued sacrifice, though 
limiting it to the one altar, was, in fact, a com- 
promise between the Israelite and Canaanite 
elements of religion; and although in the fifth 
century B.C. under Nehemiah the sacrificial 
system was developed to an amazing degree, the 
apparent triumph of the Canaanite over the 
Israelite element was not so great as might 
appear at first sight. The ethical teaching of 
the prophets came to be accepted as part of the 
religion of Jehovah without any enquiry whether 
the ritual system was in accordance with it; 
and the ritual system had this practical utility, 
that it separated Israel from the polytheistic 
nations with which it had to deal—such as the 
Babylonians and their imperial successors, the 
Persians and the Greeks—protecting Israelite 
monotheism from that which might have de- 
stroyed it, just as a husk, worthless or even 
injurious in itself, protects the kernel till the 
latter is ready to germinate and the husk is 
no more needed. 


DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION = 87 


Present limits forbid the tracing out of the 
later developments in the religion of Israel, the 
rise of individualism, the gradual emancipation 
of thought from the terrible doctrine that all 
disaster presupposes a withdrawal of the divine 
favour, the recognition of the value of martyr- 
dom, the perception that if Jehovah is the God of 
the whole earth He must desire that other nations 
also besides Israel should know His will. It 
must suffice to say that a critical reading of the 
Old Testament shows us a picture of a ceaseless 
struggle of mercy and truth against selfishness 
and superstition, and of the triumph of the good 
over the evil. 


IV. 


If the Old Testament were nothing more than 
the history of a struggle between a lofty con- 
ception of God and dead and degrading super- 
stition, its religious value would be very great; 
for as the prophets laboured to purify the 
religion of Israel from the Canaanite elements 
which threatened to overwhelm it, so in these 
days the Christian Church must strive unceas- 
ingly to purge Christianity from the many pagan 
influences which dilute and pervert the teaching 
of Christ. Those who labour for the truth of 
Christ are indeed “ the children of the prophets ”’; 


88 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


and in their struggle the record of their spiritual 
ancestors cannot fail to inspire them to more 
vigorous efiort. 

But this is not the sole merit of the Old 
Testament. In every great crisis men find in it 
a spiritual tonic, giving courage to endure in 
sure and certain hope of the victory of the good. 
It was given to Israel to manifest to the world 
what faith means—that is to say, absolute trust 
in One Who is the refuge of those who know 
Him, and Whose everlasting arms uphold and 
protect even the weakest. Moreover, as Israel 
has taught the world faith, so from Israel the 
world can best learn to worship. Hebrew poets 
have set forth in inimitable language the great- 
ness, the righteousness, the holiness, and, above 
all, the unspeakable tenderness, of the love of 
God. In the Old Testament we have an ideal 
of life ever directed Godward: “ I will sing unto 
the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God 
while I have my being.” 

It is right that we should read the Old Testa- 
ment with discrimination. It is futile to re- 
present an earthen pot of Canaanite heathenism 
as a chalice of pure gold divinely wrought; but 
even the Canaanite pot, when its real nature is 
recognized, may serve to enshrine a lesson which 
ought not to be lost. A story which bears un- 
mistakable marks of its Canaanite origin may 


PARABOLIC USE OF OLD TESTAMENT 89 


yet be profitably used as a parable to teach a 
lesson worthy of the God of Israel. We know, 
for example, that God never required the 
sacrifice of a man’s children in the original 
sense of the word sacrifice, that He ““ commanded 
it not, neither came it into His mind”; but 
Genesis xxii. may nevertheless serve to us as 
a parable to remind us of our duty. How many 
a husband or father tries to justify to himself 
some unworthy practice on the ground that 
otherwise his dear ones may suffer. To such the 
story of Abraham, taken as it stands, may serve 
as a parable, to teach the truth which Jesus 
taught, that if a man would come to Him, he 
must, as it were, hate even those who are nearest 
and dearest to him. God perpetually tries us, 
as He tried Abraham, by requiring of us a 
course of action which must entail loss or 
suffering to those whom we love, bidding us, as 
it were, sacrifice wife or children for the truth’s 
sake. 

But besides the help which the Old Testament, 
when rightly used, can supply both in our 
devotion and for our direct spiritual edification, 
there is another use to which Christians may 
apply it—a use too frequently overlooked, but 
of the utmost importance. It was of Israel 
that, according to the flesh, Christ came. He 
spoke the language of Israel; He taught as a 


90 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


prophet of Israel; and, therefore, if we would 
understand His words, we must study the idiom 
of the language of Israel, for which purpose the 
whole of the Old Testament is of inestimable 
value. We know what absurdities are produced 
by translating a French book, for example, 
literally into English, regardless of the idiom 
of either language. It is, however, commonly 
overlooked that as great perversion of the sense 
may result from translating Hebraic idiom 
literally ito English. 

No small effort is necessary in order to 
apprehend the thought of Christ. If such an 
effort is to be successful, we cannot afford to 
discard the help which we have already to hand— 
viz., the study of the Scriptures, which Jesus 
knew and loved so well, and which, by the 
application of a searching criticism, He “ ful- 
filled’ to the building up of His Church in the 
knowledge of God. 


V 


THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
By R. WEBB-ODELL, B.A. 


SUPPOSE one of our soldiers in the late war, 
smitten down into unconsciousness and escaping 
with his bare life in the tragic days of March 
and April, 1918. His last thought had been 
of contusion, defeat, and despair. The high 
hopes of earlier days had been shattered. The 
enemy was pressing in force, apparently irre- 
sistible, on Amiens, on Paris, on the Channel 
ports; and our armies, with their backs to the 
wall, seemed to have no means of withstanding 
his onset. Our soldier lingers unconscious for 
two years, and then is restored by medical 
science to find our troops at Cologne, the Kaiser 
in exile, the German, Austrian, and Turkish 
Empires dismembered, and a crushing indemnity 
laid upon the fragments which survive. He will 
hear many explanations of the causes of the 
change. Some will ascribe the victory to the 
genius of Marshal Foch, some to the advent of 
the Americans, some to the miseries entailed 


by the blockade, some to the campaign of 
91 8 


92 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


propaganda. On deliberation, he will make up 
his own mind, doubtless; but one thing he will 
not be so foolish as to doubt, that the war was 
well and truly won. 

Suppose a Galilean disciple, so stricken by 
erief at the defeat and crucifixion of Jesus 
that he lingered for two years in the delirium 
and exhaustion of mental trouble in his remote 
home, ignorant of what was passing elsewhere. 
He recovers to find that the same Apostles, 
whom last he had heard of in panic flight, were 
the heads of a busy and confident community 
which had covered with its propaganda all 
Palestine and Syria. He finds that the same 
priests, who had had no throne for Jesus but the 
cross, had in great multitudes become obedient 
to the faith. He finds that a new power of 
overwhelming force had descended upon the very 
humblest of the disciples, transforming them 
into the likeness of their Master. He finds that 
all agree that that Master is alive, not dead; 
that all date the beginning of the wonderful 
change from the third day after the Crucifixion; 
that all speak of a tomb found empty, but none 
can produce the body that once it contamed. 
He sees a joy and a certainty hitherto alien from — 
the earth, and a contempt of death and suffering 
springing from the certainty of that Joy. 
Already, if he be a man of enquiring mind, he 


THE RESURRECTION EVIDENCES 93 


will discover that the details of that first Easter 
Sunday are obscure. The wonder of the revela- 
tion and the daily expectation of Christ’s return 
will forbid a connected story. Some will place 
the first appearance of the living Lord in Galilee, 
and assert that He so revealed Himself to Peter. 
Others will connect it with Jerusalem, with 
Mary Magdalene, with the empty tomb. He 
will notice, perhaps, that the accounts are not 
reconcilable. But one thing he cannot doubt, 
if he have any regard for evidence at all. On 
the third day that happened which turned 
defeat into eternal victory. On the third day 
the Crucified One rose from the dead. The 
greatness of the effect, here as everywhere in 
history, witnesses to the greatness of the cause. 
We may see, inthe changed lives and expectations 
of the disciples, the central and inexpugnable 
evidence for the Resurrection, and therefore the 
central evidence for all our Christian faith. 
Those who would analyze, critically and soul- 
lessly, the documentary evidence in the Gospels, 
start their enquiries a generation late. When 
this or that detail has been ascribed to varying 
tendencies of influence in the Church which 
gave us the Gospels, the questions have yet to 
be faced: Whence came the Gospel 2? Whence 
came the Church? Assign the historic origin 
of Catholicity, if you will, to a Pauline syncretism 


94 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


of Hellenic and Semitic aspirations after, 
righteousness, and the prior question yet re- 
mains: Whence sprang the belief which Saul 
of Tarsus persecuted ? Whence the vision that 
appeared to him on the Damascus road? ‘The 
presence of the Holy Spirit, the ministry of 
evangelization, the observance of the Lord’s Day, 
the Eucharist of praise and thanksgiving on the 
same Lord’s Day (no pathetic yearly memory 
of the prelude to a tragedy, but a remembrance 
parallel to that of the exodus from Egypt)— 
these things, in their essentials, Saul of Tarsus 
found, and did not institute; and their historic 
origin must be sought. 

That origin is either grounded on delusion or 
on truth. If on delusion, we must accept the 
situation manfully, but must yet observe how 
utterly hopeless is the pessimism concerning 
human nature and human progress involved in 
such an absence of belief. A spring of en- 
thusiasm, of martyrdom, of sanctity, hitherto 
unknown—and behind it all a lie! The 
foundation of hope for the woman and for the 
slave, the widest influence for beneficence the 
world has yet known—and it all came from 
a hysterical delusion! Jesus, the great idealist, 
went down to the grave defeated and deserted; 
and Caiaphas, and not He, was right in his 
cynical summing up of the situation. Thus, on 


FAILURE OF COUNTER-THEORIES 95 


3 


the supposition of “delusion,” moral and intel- 
lectual integrity were sharply dissociated in the 
persons of their protagonists that first Good 
Friday and first Easter Day, and have ever since 
remained divorced! Surely, since evidence 
against the Resurrection is not obtainable, only 
presuppositions of the weightiest kind, only 
counter-theories of the highest plausibility, can 
avail to maintain so monstrous a conclusion as 
this. 

From external facts, as all reputable rationalists 
now admit, no such counter-theory can proceed. 
The hypotheses either that He did not really die, 
or that His body was secretly removed from the 
grave, are seen to be inconsistent with evidence 
and common sense. The theory of subjective, 
self-generated visions fails to account either for 
the definitely early date of the first appearance— 
“the third day ’—or for the equally definite 
and early close of the series of appearances, just 
when on the vision-hypothesis it should have 
been at its ecstatic height. Moreover, no men 
would have been less likely to see visions and 
to dream dreams than these Jews, whose con- 
ception of Messiahship had been so rudely 
falsified on Calvary. Kein’s objective vision 
theory is at least respectable. The Almighty 
despatched “telegrams from heaven’ to pro- 
duce the Apostolic faith. But this view, while 


96 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


escaping none of the difficulties of tradition, 
carries with it other grave and peculiar diffi- 
culties. Could God only convey a stupendous 
spiritual truth to men by wrapping it in the 
grave-clothes of a lie? What Christians believe 
is not merely that Jesus lives, but that He rose 
from the dead. 

‘wo concluding observations before we leave 
this branch of our subject. The objections to 
the Resurrection are based on a crude conception 
of matter which the whele trend of modern 
knowledge tends continually to revise. The 
Gospel narrative and its deduction, the Catholic 
Creeds, do not dogmatize as to the nature of the 
risen body in the manner of some provincial 
confessions. Some portions of the story assign 
to it a greater, some a less, corporeity. All the 
story yields the impression of human faculties 
endeavouring to grasp, and human language 
seeking to describe, something hitherto uncon- 
ceived, something incredibly wonderful and new. 
We may well emulate in this its reverent 
agnosticism, content to wait for exact informa- 
tion till that day when we shall know even as 
also we are known, and confident algo that no 
advances in science can discredit the Gospel 
narrative. To sum up, the Resurrection is the 
completion of what was initiated on this planet 
at Bethlehem: the intervention and the vindica- 


THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS 97 


tion of God in history, not merely in psychology, 
but in the arena of human interests and of human 
life. 

So irresistibly cogent is the evidence adduced 
above that the Christian apologist might well 
rest there, and not pursue his subject further. 
Granted the Resurrection, what need we any 
other witness? There are many other con- 
siderations, however, solemn and confirmatory, 
which may be taken into account. Four only 
of these will be dealt with in these pages. 

The first is the account of the life and character 
of Jesus presented to us by the Evangelists, 
only one of whom has any pretensions to educa- 
tion or literary skill. Let us contrast with them 
for a moment Shakespeare, the greatest of 
dramatists in his knowledge of the human heart, 
of whom it has been said, by a not irreverent 
exaggeration, that, “after God, Shakespeare has 
created most.” What is it that gives to Shake- 
speare this pre-eminence? As critics point out, 
it is that his characters léve, and therefore share 
with living men that quality of uneapectedness 
which is utterly lacking in the creations of lesser 
artists. We cannot explain Hamlet, or account 
for his actions, as we can explain Sam Weller, 
for example. Yet we feel that Hamlet is a 
man; Sam Weller a pleasant imagination. As 
a merely literary problem, the same is true of the 


98 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


synoptic Jesus as of Hamlet. Many explanations 
have been given of the historic Jesus. He has 
been accounted for eschatologically, didactically, 
mystically, ecclesiastically; and, at most, each 
endeavour to ascertain the secret of Hig person- 
ality has just added something of value to the 
study of an inexhaustible problem. This, in 
itself, gives food for thought. We have either 
to maintain that the Evangelists, within their 
limitations, confined themselves to rendering a 
faithful record, or to assert that unlearned and 
ignorant men have placed themselves on a level 
with the greatest human genius. But there is 
more to be said. Shakespeare—may we Say, 
knowing what was in man ?—never once at- 
tempted to portray a perfect human being. 
Inferior artists—Richardson, Thackeray—did so 
attempt; and, with the whole weight of the 
Christian tradition behind them, succeeded in 
little more than the creation of preposterous lay 
figures. The Evangelists have succeeded where 
these failed, and where Shakespeare never 
adventured. Rationalists, such as Mill and 
Lecky, acknowledge generously the unique moral 
supremacy of Him whom they would own 
merely as a Palestinian Jew. Sinless, needing 
never confession, and yet needing the aid of 
prayer. A detail surely beyond the compass 
of the Evangelists’ invention, or of any!~ Perfect, 


HIS INCLUSIVE PERFECTION PH, 


with all the strength of the strongest man and all 
the tenderness of the most gracious woman. In 
His age, and fallible, doubtless, in all that was 
irrelevant to His mission, and yet not of His 
age, transcending its moral delusions and its 
spiritual limitations; giving to the world an 
eternal and unconditioned ethic, in which all 
classes in this troubled twentieth century can 
at least see the one way out from sorrow and 
calamity, and yet not primarily a teacher, but 
rather straitened till the accomplishment of a 
dread baptism. A miracle-worker, and yet— 
not primarily a doer of good; and yet—limited 
by the faithlessness of man. A social reformer 
who yet could envisage the emptiness of mere 
social reform, and held Himself determinedly 
aloof from the political ideals of His time. A 
pious and orthodox Jew who yet could speak 
with authority, and take upon Himself to re- 
interpret and to cancel the most binding religious 
traditions. One who claimed for Himself the 
most unhesitating allegiance, the most utter 
self-sacrifice, and yet was meek and lowly in 
heart, the servant of the servants of God. 
Optimist and pessimist, poet and seer, obedient 
to the uttermost, and King to the uttermost— 
such is the personality of Jesus as revealed to us 
in the Gospels. He was seen, and His life was 
recorded, by men, some of whom could little 


100 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


understand Him, and none of whom could know 
Him perfectly. That was inevitable. But he 
who would ascribe the portrayal of Jesus in the 
Gospel to human invention is not to be con- 
gratulated on the acuteness or honesty of his 
intellect. He who will not yield Him the tribute 
of his service can little boast of the integrity of 
his heart. 

Yet, if we stop here, the story is maimed of its 
conclusion, and the secret of Jesus still eludes 
us. Forced so to record it—as it were, not 
knowing what they say—the Evangelists assign 
even the life of lives in a rank subordinate to 
His death. The work and office of Jesus was to 
die. Just as Calvary was infinitely more than 
tragedy, so was He infinitely more than saint. 
The more we place ourselves in the atmosphere 
of the Gospel narrative, the more we are led to 
conclude that He of Whom it tells was more than 
man, the nearer we are brought to the Catholic 
doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Our next evidence is the witness of the saints. 
Jesus has not vanished from the world which He 
made. ‘The spiritual history of mankind is rich 
with the wonders of answered prayer. The 
succession of those called mystics, who have 
fulfilled the conditions of discipleship, and so 
have inherited the Master’s promises, is the most 
indubitable Apostolic succession known to the 


THE MYSTIC WITNESS 101 


Church on earth. “Old and young, rich and 
poor, one with another ’—all “ have climbed 
the same mount, and their witness agrees 
together.” Francis of Assisi, Mother Julian ot 
Norwich, Catherine of Sienna, John Wesley, 
Pastor Hsi, the Indian Sadhu of our own day, 
all unite in a threefold testimony, and are only 
units out of thousands through the ages whose 
message is the same. Differmg in every out- 
ward circumstance and mental endowment, they 
witness to an overruling unity in spiritual life. 
First, they tell us of an ordered, definite progress 
in the discernment of God—‘‘ The Mystic Way ” 
—of a going on from grace to grace, parallel to 
the development of the man Christ Jesus. 
Secondly, they assert that this is no mere 
subjectivism or self-hypnotism, but rather a pro-_ 
eressive revelation of deity at once transcendent 
and immanent—in short, a growing knowledge 
of God. Finally, they would claim that God’s 
strength is so made perfect in weakness that 
they who in themselves are nothing can, in God, 
perform the otherwise impossible. As a matter 
of fact and history, this witness is entirely true. 
Statesmen, warriors, men of science and letters, 
these had their little day and ceased to be. ‘The 
pageants of empire pass; the august political 
imaginings of a Dante are as the shadow of a 
shade; even the inspiration of a Chatham may 


102 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


endure but for a time. The work of Francis 
and of Wesley remains, and Francis and Wesley, 
and all the rest, agree in ascribing the glory to 
God_alone.;.What are we to make of this 
unique unanimity in spiritual experience, of this 
strange empowering of the weak ones of the 
earth? Nay, what are we to make of the humbler 
order of facts, that even here and now, in lives 
not entirely dedicated, that have fulfilled but 
few of the conditions of discipleship, Jesus is 
still the greatest world power 2 What but this 2 
That what some have accomplished, all may. 
That ready to all our hands, close to all our lives, 
there is the regenerating, transforming power 
of the risen Christ. Even in these days there 
must be many in London wholly ignorant as to 
the origin and generation of electric power; but 
no one can doubt that the power on which our 
lighting and transport depend ezists, and that 
knowledge concerning it may be obtained. May 
we suggest a like attitude with regard to the 
existence of the spiritual power revealed in Jesus 
and conveyed by His Spirit 2 

Our next appeal is made to the witness for 
Christ in history, and first to the recurrent 
miracle of the survival and extension of the 
Church. Whether Jesus intended to found a 
Church or no is a question of criticism which 
need not detain us. It is enough to say that the 


THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 103 


first company of disciples was a nucleus from 
which the Church developed. At the outset it 
was little more than a party or sect within the 
Jewish Church, difiering only from others in 
its proclamation of the Messiahship of Jesus. 
Gradually, and with controversy, it enlarged its 
borders by admitting Gentiles without the pre- 
liminary of circumcision. Gradually there was 
effected, with St. Paul as the human instrument, 
a syncretism between Semitic and Hellenic 
elements, which, while retaining all that Jesus 
gave of revelation and of ethic, yet made 
Christianity possible as a European religion. 
Even the Churches of St. Paul’s foundation, 
however, derived their being and inspiration 
from the “ great hope ” of the imminent end of 
the age,.and reverenced very deeply the im- 
memorial sanctities of Jewish Church and 
temple. The temple fell, the nation was 
scattered abroad, and the end was not yet. 
“ Where,” men said, “is the promise of His 
coming ?’”? The answer came in the teaching of 
the Fourth Gospel and in the formation of the 
Catholic Church. Then—and the comment will 
equally apply to the subsequent crises of Christian 
history—the Gospel passed out of one age into 
another, the same in its eternal content, differing 
in stress and application to meet new needs, 
enriched for the changing time. That which 


104 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


should have been for its falling became to it an 
occasion of wealth. Four hundred years on we 
find the Church as thoroughly identified with 
the cause of the Roman Empire—the greatest 
secular civilization the world has ever known— 
as once it was with Judaism. The Empire fell 
before the barbarians of the North; but not all 
the courtly subservience of Church officials could 
make the Church so feeble as to share that fall. 
Leo, confronting the Goths, is but the type and 
symbol of the undying Gospel facing new 
problems and bringing all into allegiance to 
Christ. Teutonic Christianity takes its place 
beside Jewish and Greek and Latin presentments 
of the Christ, one more “ broken light ’”’ of the 
many-coloured wisdom of God. Six hundred 
years more, and Christianity is again faced with 
ruin, this time through the pride and folly of 
its own chief pastors. The unity of the Church, 
God’s chief external witness to the world, is 
broken. Hast and West separate, each claiming 
to be the whole Church, and all our Christianity 
is the poorer to this day for that first and greatest 
schism. Yet the Gospel lives in spite of the 
unworthiness of its professors. The great Latin 
Church is stronger, more spiritual, more devout 
in the twentieth century than in the eleventh. 
The Eastern Churches, then, it would seem, so 
incredibly Erastian and corrupt, how have they 


THE MIRACLE OF SURVIVAL 105 


fared ? Let the martyrdom of thousands upon 
thousands testify, laying down their lives for 
Jesus under the brutal Turkish rule; let the great 
Church of Russia—now, too, being purified 
through sufiering—add its witness that, though 
men sin, though human institutions perish, the 
Gospel does not die. Four centuries on, and the 
Western Church itself is riven asunder, again 
not without grave and universal fault. Much 
was lost at the Reformation which has yet 
painfully to be recovered. Yet the corruption 
and worldliness of the Roman Curia, the coarse 
ambition of secular princes, the conceited 
theorizings of theologians, could not ‘‘ doom to 
death’ the faith of Christendom. It was 
“fated not to die.’ The national and con- 
fessional Churches, begotten at the Reformation, 
have made, and are making, their full and worthy 
contribution to the Kingdom of God. 

In the eighteenth century a great Bishop 
declined the throne of Canterbury on the ground 
that it was too late to prop a falling Church, 
a great Frenchman boasted that he had extin- 
guished the lights of heaven. The Churches of 
Hngland and of France to-day are the most 
eloquent commentary alike on these assertions, 
and on His prescience and authority who pro- 
claimed to the few at Caesarea Philippi, “On 
this rock I will build My Church, and the gates 


106 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


of hell shall not prevail against it.” If mere 
survival has pragmatic value as a test of truth, 
how much more to have survived and grown 
against all expectations and in defiance of all 
prophecy. This, as some of our opponents are 
acute enough to see, is in itself a miraculous 
evidence for the Christian faith. 

There is no need to dwell at length on the more 
obvious witness to Christ, drawn from the course 
of history since His coming. We need only 
mention—what is brought out so fully in Brace’s 
‘ Gesta Christi ’’—the reforms which have fol- 
lowed the spread of the Gospel. Woman has been 
enthroned; the sick, the poor, the children cared 
for; the slave set free. Slowly, with God’s 
slowness, but surely, with God’s sureness, the 
work has been done. A. word, too, will suffice 
for the uniqueness of Christianity as a religion 
for the whole world. Other faiths are pro- 
vincial (Islam, for example, only for the torrid 
zone); this alone is ecumenical, for it is faith 
in the Universal Man. Once Asiatic, now 
European, but to be in all likelihood pre- 
dominantly Asiatic again, it can yet find a home 
for the African native—witness the Uganda 
Church—can give a message, and receive from 
him a message in return. 

All these mighty issues spring from the impress 
of the personality of Jesus upon a few disciples 


PSYCHOLOGY AND SIN 107 


in an obscure Roman province in the first 
century. Even in this narrower field of facts 
the question forces itself, “ Who was He ?” 

Finally, let us consider the evidential value otf 
the Christian doctrines of God and of man, 
agreeing as they do with the profoundest 
speculations of modern philosophy and of the 
surest discoveries of psychology and of science. 
This evidence is the more valid as theology and, 
still more, philosophy are but by-products of the 
historic faith, which is essentially the revela- 
tion of a Person and of a Life, and which has been 
deeply wronged in past ages by being wholly 
identified with passing systems of thought. 
We take but two examples from the Christian 
doctrine of man, and two from the Christian 
doctrine of God. 

Psychology has been forced to recognize that, 
most deep-seated of human instincts, is a rooted 
repugnance to reality, the undue yielding to 
which is, as alienists tell us, the root cause of all 
mental trouble. Man is ever seeking a way to 
escape from the pressure of circumstances, trom 
the burden of an unintelligible world. Some find 
this way in alcoholism, some in drugs; others in 
field sports, art and letters, religion. But all 
must find some way. It is imperative for human 
nature. Man, alone of created beings, is out of 


harmony with his environment. What is this but 
9 


108 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


the doctrine of the fall, of original sin, of the 
need of regenerating and prevenient grace ? 
Attenuated or ignored as this teaching has been, 
especially by us self-relying Englishmen, given 
from the first to Pelagian theory, it now stands 
out as affording the only satisfying explanation of 
a whole range of obstinate psychic facts. A man 
gets drunk, as the story goes, because that is “ the 
shortest way out of Manchester.” But he who 
finds his way of escape in a loyal acceptance of 
Jesus is regenerated himself, and reforms 
Manchester as well. For our purpose, however, 
the point is this. The conclusions of experi- 
mental psychology were anticipated and ac- 
counted for by Christ and His Apostles nineteen 
hundred years ago. 

The many appearances of pain in the world, 
the spectacle of nature, “red in tooth and 
claw,” have led men to discredit not only the 
old argument from design, but also the goodness 
of God, if, indeed, He exist at all. It would be 
sufficient, indeed, to indicate that Christianity is 
based, not on dogmatic reasonings at large upon 
the relation of God to the world, but on the 
personality of Jesus, revealing to us as much 
of God as we are able here to know. “ He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” We are not 
now compelled, however, to take refuge in a 
necessary ignorance, but can boldly challenge the 


PAIN AND SIN 109 


facts of the situation.* The capacity for feeling 
pain depends, as we now know, on the develop- 
ment and organization of the nervous system, 
specifically upon the brain. Only the highest 
orders of vertebrates are susceptible of pain in 
the human sense at all, and the capacity for 
pain possessed by animals is exceptionally low, 
lower even than that of the less advanced races 
of mankind, whose insensibility is the constant 
marvel of competent observers. Moreover, there 
is a mass of evidence, collected in part from first- 
hand human experience, that beasts of prey 
bring with them a natural anesthetic, abolishing 
pain and apprehension in their victims. Man 
brings with him no such anesthetic, and there 
is every ground for presuming that the only true 
pain, other than human, on the earth 1s that 
of the domesticated animals, brought, under the 
shadow of the tragedy and of the sin of man. 
Startling truths, brought recently to light by 
anatomists and zoologists, but again anticipated 
nineteen hundred years ago: “ The whole creation 
eroaneth and travaileth together until now, 
waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.” 
When man is redeemed, nature will be redeemed 


* The author owes his knowledge of these facts as to the 
physiology and sensibility of animals to an interesting 
lecture by the Rev. Theodore Wood. The inferences from 
the facts are the author’s own. 


110 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


too, and all, as at the first, very good. Buta 
deeper consideration arises. If Jesus were 
unique, His sufferings, whether physical or 
spiritual, were unique too. His exquisite con- 
stitution was capable of pain, transcending, both 
in kind and in degree, that possible to coarser 
beings. It was a sure instinct of prophecy that 
so laid stress on the Passion of Jesus, and that so 
linked with tribulation the possibility of progress. 
It knew not why. It only knew what the 
Master taught and His Apostles recorded. It 1s 
certain that Christian experience has already 
verified the truth of the message. The prophetic 
instinct could afford to wait through all the 
centuries for the further vindication by human 
research, and now the vindication has come. 

To turn, in conclusion, to the Christian 
doctrine of God. Physical science, in itself 
and by itselfi—and we must remember, of course, 
that it only purports to deal with a narrow and 
specifically separate range of facts, and pretends 
not to account for the essential things of life— 
has removed Him farther from the universe. 
No longer is the lightning His visitation, the 
thunder His voice. The Creator of such a 
universe as 1s revealed by modern astronomy is 
virtually unknown to human faculties, is not 
even remotely conceivable as a tribal God. 
The philosopher, for his part, will tell us of an 


MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 111 


Absolute, in whom all things have their necessary 
unity, impassible and unconditioned, more re- 
mote still than the God of physical science. 
And yet, by an aboriginal and universal instinct, 
the heart of man cries out for God, and is rest- 
less till it finds its rest in Him. No Allah, 
throned irresponsible despot of the skies, nor 
yet any Buddhistic abstraction, can meet the 
cravings of the modern man, imperative alike 
on the side of reason and of devotion. To a 
people complacently self-satisfied as to their 
knowledge of God Jesus came, with claims and 
revelation which earned for Him the blasphemer'’s 
death. His proclamation of God as the eternal 
Lover, Worker, Sufierer, as the universal Father, 
transcended the needs of His own time, to meet 
those of the present day. Our reason and our 
devotion alike crave for a reconciling unity, and 
we find it in Him in whom God and man, heaven 
and earth, eternity and time, are united for 
evermore. Christ had first to be interpreted 
in terms of God. The problem now has shifted, 
and God is interpreted in terms of Christ. It 1s 
surely most highly evidential that the revelation 
of our Master should meet such widely differmg 
needs, that all problems of thought are so solved 
in Him. 

Man is differentiated from the rest of the 
animal world by the possession of an individuality 


112 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


which can transcend the law of his species. 
Reason, not instinct, is his primary guide; and 
in the endowment of free will he has the proof 
of his creation in the divine image. 
Personality, therefore, is God’s special gift 
to man; and unity, which is the attribute of 
personality, is man’s greatest, unaided thought 
of God. When the Jew degraded the gods of 
the surrounding nations to the status of demons 
or of nonentities, and thus substituted mono- 
theism for monolatry, there was a great stage 
marked in the development of the religion of 
mankind. But personality is not an ultimate 
truth, and unity in diversity is the prerequisite 
of social life. A God Who is only one cannot 
be known by His creatures unless He be con- 
ceived anthropomorphically, unless man has 
created Him in his own image, which is, indeed, 
the human origin of all theologies. A God Who 
is only one cannot be love, for it would be in 
Him at most an adventitious attribute, and He 
would also be essentially devoid of that seeking 
sympathy which unites with the loved one, and 
gains the interior knowledge which alone is. 
knowledge indeed. Very slowly—overheard, as 
it were, rather than heard in Scripture—the 
doctrine of the Trinity came to formulation. 
A treasure, doubtless, in earthen vessels, couched 
in forms of thought which the world has out- 


THE BURDEN OF PROOF 113 


grown, and needing—in the writer’s opinion, at 
least—a restatement in terms of contemporary 
thought and science; yet, even 80, the nearest 
approach in speculation to a satisfactory philo- 
sophic conception of God, though gathered, at 
any rate in its main conceptions, from the 
message of simple folk of the least speculative 
and metaphysical of the nations. Can there be 
a surer evidence of our holy Faith than this— 
that from such earthly beginnings it 1s yet able 
to meet the intellectual as well as the religious 
needs of man ? 

To sum up briefly. The need of the present 
day is an aggressive, missionary, forward-looking 
Christianity, aflame with the fire of its first love. 
Entrenched ecclesiasticisms no longer suffice. 
Nowhere is this more to be desired than in the 
specifically evidential field. The Christian 1s 
ready to answer questions, but should be readier 
to ask them. The Faith and the Church are 
here, and have to be accounted for. The burden 
of proof is upon those who oppose, not upon 
those who uphold the Gospel. We would ask in 
all seriousness of all men of good will, What 
estimate can you give of Jesus, of His resur- 
rection, of the Gospel story, of His saints, of 
His Church, of His teaching as to God and man, 
which is intrinsically as probable as that which 
Christians give—nay, which has in it any shadow 


1i4 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 


of probability at all? If, then, the weight of 
presumption be on the side of Christ, is it not 
your duty to your intellect as well ag to your 
conscience to make full trial of His claims, to 
become His disciples, in due course His Apostles 
too? So will experiment pass into experience; 
so will the promise be fulfilled, ‘‘ Whoso doeth 
My will, he shall know of the doctrine.” Not 
by dialectic, indeed, does God will the salvation 
of His people; but he who changes his view- 
point (which is repentance), and begins to see 
things as Jesus sees them, must end in con- 
fessing, ‘“‘ Truly this is the Son of God.” 


VI 


THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
By ARTHUR S. PEAKE, M.A., D.D. 


CHRISTIANITY is an historical religion. It stands 
or falls with an historical personality, with a life 
lived here upon earth, with events which hap- 
pened in space and time. If Jesus of Nazareth 
never lived, if He lived but we have no trust- 
worthy record of His life, if He died and death 
meant for Him a return to non-existence, then 
the Christian religion would rest upon illusion. 
It is true that the Gospels would remain great 
literature. They would offer us a wealth of moral 
teaching, and move us profoundly by their deep 
spiritual quality, and the central figure would 
remain for us an imperishable ideal. But much 
even of this value would disappear if the story 
were just a romance. Tor the critic would say 
that the ideal was too remote from our common 
life, the moral demand was pitched too high, the 
religious teaching it contained had no guarantee 
of reality, while the ethical principles were 
exposed to serious objections. If, however, the 


Gospels paint a sufficiently accurate portrait of 
115 


116 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


a real personality and describe with reasonable 
fidelity the outstanding events of His career, then 
the moral principles He proclaimed and illus- 
trated in His own character and action, the 
faith He taught to others, in the strength of which 
He lived and died, are not the ethics of a paper 
Utopia or the religion of cloud-land, but find no 
little of their guarantee in historical facts. 

When we affirm the inseparable connection of 
Christianity with history, we create serious 
difficulties for the modern mind. These diffi- 
culties are, in fact, so grave that many would 
view with relief the dissolution of so entangling 
an alliance. But we cannot accept this way of 
escape, partly because it would mean the aban- 
donment of Christianity as it has always been 
understood, partly because other difficulties 
would remain, and, apart from the historical 
guarantee of the truths for which Christianity 
stands, it would be much harder to meet them. 
We must then face the formidable problems 
involved in the historical basis of our religion. 
The Christian position involves both an affirma- 
tion of facts and an interpretation of facts. 
When we say Jesus of Nazareth died upon the 
cross, we are affirming an historical fact; when we 
say Jesus died for our sins, we are putting an 
interpretation upon the fact, transforming a 
bare event into a Gospel. Difficulties arise in 


CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 117% 


connection with both sets of affirmations. Our 
present concern is with the former. One principle 
must be laid down at the outset. The investiga- 
tion of alleged facts must follow the method 
proper to historical enquiry. It is illegitimate 
to demand that it shall satisfy the standard 
applied to other types of investigation, such as 
those of physical or biological science or those of 
mathematics. Further, the enquiry must not 
be split up into a series of mutually independent 
investigations. We cannot, for example, reach 
a final decision on such a question as the super- 
natural birth of Christ or His resurrection apart 
from the general conviction we have formed as 
to the real nature of His personality. Once 
more, we must seek to make our study of the 
evidence as honest and as scientific as possible. 
We must be guided, not by our wishes, but by an 
austere devotion to truth. We must rid our- 
selves, so far as we can, of presuppositions and 
prejudices, and seek with a single eye to see the 
past as we can recreate it by historical research 
and scientific use of the imagination. On the 
other hand, we should avoid unfairness to the 
witnesses whom it is our duty to cross-examine, 
and approach our task im a temper and attitude 
other than that of a suspicious, captious, and 
bullying counsel for the prosecution. 

The first question we must face is this: Did 


118 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


Jesus ever live? No reasonable student of 
history would deny that the evidence for His 
existence is overwhelming. But as we have to 
deal with unreasonable people, whose policy is 
to deny everything and who brush aside the 
Christian evidence, we must see if we can 
establish the fact independently of the New 
Testament. We know that the Jews expected a 
Messiah—that is, a king of the lineage of David— 
who would crush the foreign oppressor, lift 
His nation to unchallenged supremacy, and rule 
the heathen with a rod of iron. We can trace 
the Christian people back into the first century 
of our era by evidence independent of the Ne 

Testament, and we find that they, too, believed 
ina Messiah. But the Messiah whom they pro- 
claimed was very different from the Jewish 
Messiah. They identified Him with a Galilean 
artisan who, they said, had been crucified by 
. Pontius Pilate. How did such a sect originate, 
and how did the Jewish doctrine of a Messiah 
undergo so strange a transformation ? It is said 
that the Jews had a doctrine of a suffering 
Messiah. It is just possible that this was the 
case, but probably it was restricted to quite small 
circles, and it is very questionable if it arose as 
early as the first century. But it would not, 
even if it was earlier and widely accepted among 
the Jews, account for the rise of a belief in a 


A CRUCIFIED MESSIAH ike, 


crucified Messiah. What is all-important here 
is not the fact, but the mode of death. The 
Jewish law pronounced a curse on him who 
suilered by this form of death, and this has always 
been a great obstacle to the acceptance by Jews 
of Jesus as Messiah. Accordingly, no develop- 
ment of the Jewish Messianic doctrine could 
possibly have given rise to the belief in a crucified 
Messiah, nor could any founders of a new 
religious society among the Jews, except under 
compulsion, have hung such a millstone around 
the neck of their new movement. There is no 
explanation of this fact that they were driven 
to assert Messiahship for a Jew who had been 
crucified other than this—that a Jew whom they 
regarded as Messiah had suffered this accursed 
death, and in spite of it was believed by His 
followers to be the Messiah. We can accordingly 
deduce with certainty from the mere existence of 
a Jewish sect based on the belief in a crucified 
Messiah the following facts: First, the historical 
existence of Jesus; secondly, His death by cruci- 
fixion; thirdly, the belief that He was the 
Messiah. Wecan probably go somewhat further. 
They must, even before His death, have believed 
Him to be Messiah, for to maintain their faith 
at all under so staggering a blow was difficult, 
to rise to a loftier height of faith than they had 
previously reached was in such conditions a sheer 


120 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 


impossibility. But we can draw a further in- 
ference with great confidence. They cannot 
have reached and held this conviction without 
the cognizance of Jesus, and they must have 
known whether He approved or disapproved. 
If He disapproved, they could neither have 
continued to hold it in His lifetime nor have 
maintained it after His death. We are driven, 
then, to the conclusion that Jesus believed 
Himself to be the Messiah. Since, however, it. 
is one thing to claim a position for oneself and 
quite another to convince others of it, we may 
infer that the impression He made on His 
followers was such that they willingly accorded 
this dignity to Him, and maintained their belief 
in it even after His cause had been irretrievably 
discredited, as it would seem, by a death which 
expressed, not simply repudiation by the leaders 
of His people, but the verdict of God Himself 
in His law. 

So far, then, we have been brought, without 
any appeal to documents, by a series of irre- 
sistible inferences from the undoubted fact that 
a sect arose in Judaism tracing its origin to a 
Jew whom its members admitted to have been 
crucified, but whom they affirmed to be the 
Messiah. But this line of argument has been 
adopted only for the sake of unreasonable people. 
Those who accept the ordinary laws of evidence 


DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE 121 


will recognize that the direct documentary 
evidence amply attests the historicity of Jesus. 
In the nature of the case, this is mainly Christian 
evidence. But it is not entirely so. Tacitus, 
the Roman historian, writing early in the second 
century with a bitter prejudice against the Jews 
and their contemptible superstitions, and re- 
garding Christianity as touching a still lower 
depth, gives an account of “ Christus,” the 
founder of this execrable superstition, and asserts 
that he was executed by Pontius Pilate. 
Naturally, however, it is to the Christian docu- 
ments that we must turn for most of our in- 
formation. It is unreasonable to ask for con- 
temporary pagan or Jewish evidence, for Greek 
and Roman writers disliked and despised the 
Jews, while an obscure religious sect in Palestine, 
proclaiming that a Galilean carpenter had been 
crucified by Pilate, had risen from the dead, and 
was preached as Messiah, Saviour, and Lord 
by His adherents, would have been deemed by 
them too insane even to stir their contempt. 
Tacitus speaks of the Christians only because 
they had been executed with atrocious tortures, 
as scapegoats to divert from Nero the odium of 
having set fire to Rome. Nor would the Jewish 
authorities, who were ultimately responsible for 
the crucifixion of Jesus, who utterly repudiated 
His claims and regarded Him as a blasphemer, 


122 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


have been specially interested in perpetuating 
His memory. We must accordingly go to the 
Christian records, and there is not the slightest 
reason why they should be denied a hearing. 
It must, of course, be an impartial hearing. We 
must recognize that they were written by be- 
lievers who looked at the events from a favour- 
able standpoint, who wrote to edify and strengthen 
their fellow-Christians, to defend the religion 
and its Founder against misrepresentation and 
attack, and to commend them to those who were 
without. And for our judgment on the origin 
and date and historical character of these docu- 
ments we must turn here, as in similar cases, to 
the experts. In doing so, we must not forget 
that many of the experts in New Testament 
criticism have entirely broken with Christianity 
in its orthodox forms, and that some of them 
could scarcely be considered Christians in any 
tenable sense of the term. 

The earliest documents in the New Testament 
are probably the authentic Pauline Epistles. 
The number of those who deny the genuineness 
of them all is infinitesimal, and the minimum 
of generally recognized Epistles is seven: | Thes- 
salonians, Galatians, 1 and2 Corinthians, Romans, 
Philemon, Philippians. Many scholars allow, 
in addition, the authenticity of Colossians; 
fewer, perhaps, that of 2 Thessalonians; some- 


THE EPISTLES AND THE GOSPELS 123 


what fewer, again, that of Ephesians. The 
Epistles to Timothy and Titus are generally 
rejected by scholars who are not bound to tradi- 
tional opinions, though even in them authentic 
fragments are frequently recognized. Paul was 
a contemporary of Jesus, and knew personally 
some of His leading followers, including St. Peter 
and St. James, the brother of Jesus. His letters 
leave no room for doubt as to the historicity of 
Jesus; they give us some facts as to His life and 
teaching, and imply more. The dates and 
authorship of the Gospels are by no means so 
assured. St. Mark is the oldest of our existing 
Gospels; it was probably written before the 
destruction of Jerusalem in a.p. 70, but may 
possibly have been a little later. St. Matthew 
and St. Luke are partly based upon St. Mark, 
but also on a lost collection of sayings and dis- 
courses of Jesus commonly referred to under the 
symbol Q. This was probably nearly con- 
temporary with St. Mark, but may have been 
somewhat earlier. The dates of St. Matthew and 
St. Luke are uncertain, but they probably lie 
within the last quarter of the first century. The 
Gospel of St. John is still the subject of much 
debate. Its Apostolic authorship is now largely 
denied, and many think that it contains very 
little historical matter. I do not myself take go 
negative a view of it, but we are compelled to 
10 


124 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


rely in the main for our purpose on the Synoptic 
Gospels. And here some scholars would contend 
for earlier dates than I have mentioned. Har- 
nack, perhaps the most distinguished of all, is 
convinced that the Acts of the Apostles was 
written by St. Luke early in the sixties, while 
St. Paul was still alive. This implies a somewhat 
earlier date for the third Gospel, so that St. Mark 
and Q would be put back into the fifties at the 
latest—that is, within thirty years of the death 
of Jesus. While I believe that this 1s too 
optimistic, we are justified in placing our oldest 
sources at a time when many who had known 
Jesus were still living, and the tradition about 
Him in the Church was still fresh. This also 
guarantees not only the historicity of Jesus, but 
the preservation of much trustworthy informa- 
tion as to His life and teaching and His person- 
ality. 

This is confirmed by the presence in the records 
of elements which can hardly have been invented. 
With the growing reverence for Jesus, as the 
historical life receded into the past—a more timid 
reverence, we might say—there was a tendency 
to omit or modify features which created diffi- 
culties. Examples of such features are the 
apparent disclaimer of “ goodness”’ in the 
question: “ Why callest thou Me good ?”; the 
confession of His ignorance as to the time of 


STORY OF JESUS NOT INVENTED 125 


His second coming; the cry of desertion on the 
Cross, which suggested that Jesus felt Himself 
abandoned by God and died in despair; the 
Kvangelist’s statement that at Nazareth Jesus 
could do no mighty works. These and similar 
features are reported, because they really hap- 
pened. ‘To have invented them would have been 
to run counter to the interests the writers were 
seeking to serve. Moreover, the character is 
portrayed with such consistency in the sources 
that it makes the impression of having been drawn 
from the life; and the personality, the events, and 
the utterances, are such as entirely transcended 
the power of the Evangelists to imagine. 

I have spoken of the historicity of Jesus at 
such length because it is so fundamental, and 
because I think that the more negative criticism 
may find itself more and more driven to this 
extreme position. But I have desired to deal 
with it in such a way as to lay the foundation for 
further argument. Very few, in fact, question 
it, or doubt that in our oldest sources the main 
outlines of His teaching and career are reproduced 
with considerable fidelity. But several points 
emerge here to which some reference is necessary. 
In the first place, the miraculous element is very 
prominent even in our earliest narrative. The 
problem is complex and difficult, and demands 
a more elaborate examination than igs here 


126 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


possible. But the following observations may be 
made: There is a general tendency to allow 
that the cases of healing may, as a whole, be 
historical. They have already been largely 
paralleled, and it is felt that a personality so 
commanding as that of Jesus, gifted with faith 
so illimitable and contagious, may well have 
effected cures of the most marvellous kind. 
With reference to other wonderful works, it 
ought to be said at the outset that we are com- 
mitted to no theory of the events, but at most 
to the fact that they occurred. The drift of 
recent thought and discussion has been to make 
us more cautious in drawing the line between the 
possible and the impossible. And we may find 
that they constitute no violation of natural 
order. Still, we justly demand unusually strong 
evidence for events so abnormal. The miracles, 
as a whole, are free from bizarre, extravagant, 
and repulsive features. They harmonize with 
the character of the central figure, fit naturally 
into the record, and are of a piece with the 
teaching. It is notoriously difficult to detach 
them from the general structure of the narrative. 
Moreover, we cannot finally judge the stories 
apart from the personality of whom they are 
told. If on other grounds we are convinced that 
the claims Jesus made for Himself and those 
made for Him by the Church from the beginning 


THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 127 


are true, then the uniqueness of the personality 
makes more credible the unique events. The 
interests of His mission were of supreme moment 
to mankind, and for their sake, whatever powers 
over nature were needed could fittingly be 
granted to Him. To the ordinary man such 
powers could not safely be trusted, and even now 
the knowledge of natural forces has far outrun 
our moral fitness to use them. Even to very 
good men such powers would offer a great 
temptation. If Jesus was what His followers 
believed Him to be, they could securely be placed 
in His hands. It may be granted that the age 
was uncritical, ignorant of our ideas of the uni- 
formity of nature, and apt to magnify the 
unusual into the miraculous; that the witnesses 
were not trained observers, and that the stories 
lost nothing in the telling; that parable may have 
been transformed into miracle; that Old Testa- 
ment narrative or prophecy may have given rise 
to some of the stories; but it may be questioned 
whether the operation of all these forces together 
suffices to eliminate “miracle” in the strict 
sense of the term. This is especially the case 
with the resurrection of Jesus, the central core 
of which neither the discrepancy of the witnesses 
nor the explanations of the irreducible facts have 
sutticed to dissolve. 

It is a mistake, however, to suppose that 


128 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


critical theories are mainly inspired by the desire 
to get rid of the supernatural. They are largely 
suggested by the comparison of the documents 
with each other or of different sections within 
the same document. It is undeniable that the 
accounts of the same incident frequently differ. 
Moreover, we can see that one is likely to be a 
closer representation of the fact than another, 
and not infrequently it 1s possible to explain what 
causes were operative in creating the secondary 
out of the original version. There was a tendency 
to idealize and to soften, an apologetic interest 
was also at work, and there was possibly a certain 
influence of later dogma colouring the report of — 
the teaching. But the action of all these forces 
has been greatly exaggerated. They can be 
traced more clearly in the later narratives than 
in the earlier, and, above all, in the Fourth 
Gospel. Perhaps we ought to be rather surprised 
in the case of the Synoptists that the contem- 
porary theology has affected them so little. We 
might have expected the characteristic teaching 
of St. Paul to have been read back into the 
teaching of Jesus much more freely than proves 
to have been the case. But when all is said and 
done, we have first-rate sources in addition to the 
Pauline Epistles: St. Mark, Q, the special source 
employed in the Third Gospel, probably not a 
little in the Fourth Gospel. 


GOSPELS GIVE ALL ESSENTIALS 129 


Even the discrepancies are of service to us, 
for by comparison of different accounts we may 
be able to work back to the original from which 
they have come. Even legend, if legend there 
be, has its value, for it enables the historian to 
see what the impression made by the personality 
was. If we stipulate that a canonical document 
must be free from error in matters of fact, our 
Gospels will hardly satisfy such a test. But we 
must not demand too much. We have a right to 
expect that the sources should tell us all that it 
is essential for us to know. Judged by the 
requirements of a modern historian, our docu- 
ments are meagre and unsatisfactory. They 
fail to tell us many things we greatly desire to 
know. But they give us what is vital and 
essential—all, indeed, that is necessary for their 
purpose and that we have a right to require. 
They give us a vivid conception of the personality, 
a sufficiently trustworthy record of the teaching, 
a knowledge of the critical events. It 1s, above 
all, the first of these which is important, for the 
chief contribution which Jesus made to religion 
was not His teaching, not even His teaching 
about God. His supreme contribution was Just 
Himself, His personality, His character, what 
He was and what He did. And that is because 
to know Jesus is to know God. Our fullest and 
most vivid conception of God cannot be conveyed 


130 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


to us by verbal description, however copious 
and exact. Personality alone can reveal person- 
ality in its richness and depth, its variety and 
flexibility, its subtle shades, its unceasing and 
automatic reaction to environment. And thus 
it is, as we steep ourselves in the Gospels and 
our knowledge of Jesus grows in depth and large- 
hess and sympathetic understanding, that our 
apprehension of God’s inmost character and His 
relation to us becomes more luminous and more 
profound. Even what may seem the trivialities 
in the record are not its least precious feature ; 
for in these unstudied words’and actions the 
true nature may be revealed at points which in 
great moments are apt to be submerged and 
lost to view. 

Yet recent discussions have raised other diffi- 
culties which cannot be ignored. I refer in the 
first place to what is frequently called the 
eschatological theory. It has, of course, for long 
been a difficulty that Jesus seems to have 
anticipated that He would return, and the 
Kingdom of God would be set up on earth, while 
some of those to whom He was speaking would 
be still alive. But this has not been generally 
regarded as His central and most characteristic 
message which has been sought in His ethical 
and religious teaching. Recently, however, it 
has been urged that the whole thought of Jesus 


THE ESCHATOLOGICAL THEORY 131. 


was concentrated on the approaching coming of 
the kingdom. The existing constitution of 
society and its most fundamental institutions 
would be swept away, and a wholly new order 
would be introduced by God’s sudden catastrophic 
intervention, and in this new order Jesus Him- 
self, Messiah and Son of Man, would reign upon 
earth. True, He did give ethical teaching, but 
this was “interim ethic,” designed to control 
men’s conduct in the interval before the new era 
should come and prepare them to be citizens in 
that kingdom. No human effort could bring it 
nearer. Only when the predestined hour had 
struck would the new divine order suddenly 
replace the kingdoms of this world. This theory, 
while of service in calling attention to phenomena 
in the Gospels which had not received their due, 
seems to compromise very gravely the claim of 
Jesus. For it represents Him as the victim of a 
delusion which did not touch something that 
lay on the circumference of His thought, and 
was a mere limitation of outlook shared with the 
men of His time, but a delusion which lay at 
the centre of all His interest and was the absorb- 
ing theme of His mission. 

But this theory in its thorough-going and 
radical form is grossly one-sided and exaggerated. 
It represents the Kingdom of God as still entirely 
in the future, though very near, whereas there are 


132 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


sayings of Jesus which imply that in a sense 
it is already present, though not in its fulness. 
It throws the teaching and the career of Jesus 
out of focus, placing in the forefront what has 
proved to be but the temporary vesture of the 
conception He had formed of the kingdom, and 
pushing into the background what has proved to 
be of imperishable significance. And if this was 
really the essence of His message, and if on this 
hope the new religion was entirely based, we fail 
to understand why, when it proved a delusion, 
Christianity did not collapse. But, as a matter 
of fact, it advanced at an ever-expanding rate as 
though nothing at all had happened. 

On another side the closer study of the Synoptic 
Gospels has suggested to many that the develop- 
ment which Christianity took, notably under 
the influence of St. Paul, was quite other than 
Jesus had intended. When we pass from the 
Synoptic Gospels to the Pauline Kpistles we 
seem, it is urged, to be in another world. Jesus 
is a preacher to whom the common people 
listen gladly. He speaks with simplicity, charm, 
and power on the deepest themes, which He 
illuminates by His matchless parables; while 
St. Paul seems like a Christian Rabbi entangled in 
tortuous dialectic on theological problems which 
have for us long lost their interest. Jesus, it is 
said, preached a lofty ethic, marked by excep- 


PAUL AND CHRISTIANITY 133 


tional inwardness and delicacy, and had no con- 
cern for theology; while St. Paul defaced that 
lucid and precious Gospel by transforming it into 
an abstruse theology which he defended in arid 
controversy. But we must point out in answer 
to this that Jesus was concerned above all 
things with religion, and religion implies 
theology. To this the retort is made that with 
the theology of Jesus there is no need to quarrel, 
but that of St. Paul is quite another matter. 
Jesus made the Fatherhood of God His starting- 
point, the Kingdom of God the goal. But St. 
Paul placed Jesus in the centre, and gave an 
entirely new prominence to His Person and work. 
The Galilean teacher and martyr was turned into 
a divine being, the pre-existent Son of God; 
while His characteristic teaching was thrust into 
the background, His death and resurrection were 
viewed as a drama of salvation; in a word, 
theology became mythology. Not a few have 
argued that even in the first generation of the 
Church this radical departure from the pure 
and simple teaching of the Master was made. 
Must we believe that St. Paul effected this 
fatal transformation? Not consciously, as- 
suredly, since his devotion to Jesus was too 
deep to admit of such disloyal perversion. But 
it is asserted that St. Paul’s mystical experience 
of Jesus made him feel independent of a know- 


134 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


ledge of His teaching. This cannot be con- 
ceded, for, with his adoration of Jesus, Hig 
lightest word would have claimed his reverent 
attention. And in face of the bitter hostility of 
those who denied his Apostolic status and the 
genuinely Christian quality of his teaching, he 
could not have neglected to familiarize himself 
with the career and teaching of his Master 
without presenting his antagonists with a welcome 
and fatal weapon. His alleged mythology roused 
no controversy in the Church, such as was 
excited by his doctrine of the Law; and the 
leaders of the Church at Jerusalem recognized 
the validity of his Gospel, and had already inter- 
preted the death of Christ as suffered for our 
sins. Indeed, it has become more and more 
difficult to fasten the responsibility on St. Paul, 
and much stress is now laid on earlier movements 
in the Church itself in this direction. It is 
urged in particular that before the rise of Chris- 
tianity a Messianic theology had been elaborated 
in Judaism, and that the primitive Christians, 
convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, simply 
applied this doctrine to Him. But this could 
hardly have been done unless they had felt 
it to be in harmony with the character of Jesus 
as they had observed it and Hig teaching as 
they remembered it. 

Really the hypothesis is unnecessary. For, 


WITNESS OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 135 


in the teaching of Jesus itself, this doctrine is 
essentially contained. It is sufficiently attested, 
even if we limit ourselves to St. Mark and Q. 
Jesus thought of Himself as Messiah. This is 
implied in the stories of the temptation and 
the triumphal entry, in the confession of 
St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi, in the title over 
His cross. The very fact of the Crucifixion 
implies it, for the one charge which Pilate could 
not afford to disregard was the charge that Jesus 
was setting Himself up to be King in place of 
Cesar. We may go further. Jesus believed 
Himself to be the Son of Man. This is attested 
by every one of our extant sources. The term 
all but entirely drops out of use as a title of 
Jesus except on His own lips. We may, there- 
fore, infer that for some reason it was not con- 
genial to the early Church, and was only retained 
in the Gospels because it was too deeply rooted 
in the tradition to be ignored. The Son of Man 
was known in Jewish apocalyptic as the pre- 
existent heavenly being who was to come with 
the clouds of heaven to judge mankind and reign 
upon earth. This role Jesus believed Himself 
destined to fulfil, but He expanded and deepened 
its significance by connecting it with the figure 
of the suffering Servant of Yahweh, whose 
mission was to reveal the true God to the world 
and to suffer for the sin of mankind. He lives 


136 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


in an intimate and unshared relation to the 
Father as His Son. He stands above all His 
predecessors, and is of higher rank even than the 
angels. He forgives the sins of men, and will be 
their Judge. He claims an absolute obedience 
which overrides the dearest and most authorita- 
tive of human relations. His Blood inaugurates 
the New Covenant, and He gives His life a 
ransom for many. 

It is true that the emphasis is different in Jesus 
and in St. Paul. But for this neither St. Paul 
nor his predecessors were responsible. It was 
fitting for Jesus to be more reticent than His 
followers in speaking about Himself; nor could 
detailed teaching as to the great redemptive 
facts which closed His earthly career have profit- 
ably been given to those who were incredulous 
of His predictions of the Passion. But if Jesus 
truly was what our earliest documents represent 
Him as claiming to be, the death and the resur- 
rection must be momentous in their significance. 
They created a problem, and to its solution St. 
Paul contributed most. If his account of the 
Person and the work of Jesus is mythology, 
we cannot acquit Jesus from the responsibility of 
originating it. 

But that He was deluded by megalomania is 
assuredly not easy to believe. For, by the 
testimony of the wisest and the best, no figure 


CHRIST OF HISTORY AND OF FAITH 137 


in history is more marked by perfect poise and 
mental balance, none more utterly sincere, more 
searching in His moral judgments, more relent- 
less in His exposure of unreality. Such was 
His inmost consciousness; for us it is decisive. 
Its truth is attested by the Gospel portrait. 
What such men as our Evangelists might have 
been expected to achieve had they been left to 
themselves may be guessed from the Apocryphal 
Gospels. They had, indeed, no skill to fashion 
such a figure from their own resources. It is con- 
vincing, because they drew it from the life. The 
Jesus whom they present to us is not the stifi 
and artificial product of laboured invention, but 
free and natural, moving as a living man among 
living men. He is a Jew of His own country 
and His own age. But He is more than the 
flower of Judaism, the heir to its rich and wonder- 
ful inheritance. He rises sheer above all these 
limitations of race and country and time. He 
is strange in no land or age, alien to no nation, 
but at home and welcome in every century and 
among every people. The passing of the years 
does not render Him obsolete. He keeps pace 
with all our progress, He marches at the head 
of each generation, beckoning humanity forward 
to new and higher endeavour. 

But He is not merely the guide of the pilgrim, 
setting the goal plainly before him, and mapping 


138 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 


out the path he is to follow. He comes to us in 
our weakness and our despondency, our weariness 
and despair; He unseals within us the springs 
of courage and hope, and fills us with His 
divine energy and power. So no day passes 
over us but tne claim He makes to be our Lord 
and Master and Saviour is confirmed by vast 
multitudes who have in their own experience 
verified its truth. 


Vil 


JESUS CHRIST 
By C. F. NOLLOTH, M.A., D.Lrrr. 


AN excited crowd is seldom to be credited with 
wisdom, either of word or action. Yet in one 
case, at least, this rule does not hold good. 
When Christ rode into Jerusalem, the first day 
of the week before His death, “all the city was 
moved,” and out of the stir came a question, 
a very momentous and a very wise one, so wise 
that, wherever men have heard that name and 
have begun seriously to think about it, the same 
question has come into their minds: ‘‘ Who is 
this ?”’ 

The object of this essay is to raise the question 
once again, and, so far as the space at disposal 
will allow, to indicate in outline what may 
reasonably be said in reply to it. That day an 
answer was at once forthcoming. It came from 
another crowd—the multitude who were accom- 
panying Him. They had no doubt whatever. 
“This is Jesus, the prophet, of Nazareth of 
Galilee.’ A confident answer, and one based on 


personal knowledge. But does it suffice? It 
139 1l 


140 JESUS CHRIST 


could establish Christ’s identity with the Rabbi 
who went about doing good, healing and teach- 
ing; and so far it appears to have satisfied the 
questioners. But there is much more in the 
question than a matter of identity. As time 
went on it gathered a deep and an enlarged 
meaning. Men began to ask themselves: “* What 
is He?” They were not content to think of Him 
merely as Jesus, a prophet who had lived at 
Nazareth, and had moved on the ordinary plane 
of human experience. Other questionings arose 
within their minds. They came to see that He 
was not as other men, or even as other prophets. 
When those who had been with Him in the 
course of His ministry recalled well-remembered 
words and acts of which the marvellous and the 
supernatural elements were less surprising than 
the love and graciousness which gave rise to 
them, they had no doubt whatever that He had 
come from a higher world than this and, when 
His work was done, had returned to it. 

Thus, the apprehension of those who first 
companied with Him moved along this line of 
srowing knowledge and insight. They knew 
Tim first as man. It took time to see in Him 
a personality of which the visible manhood was 
at once the veil and the expression, now dis- 
closing, now hiding the true self. But time 
alone would not have sufficed to reveal Him. 


— 


APPREHENSION OF CHRIST GRADUAL 141 


Men saw in the Theophanies, which form so 
characteristic a feature of Old Testament 
religion, an intimation that God was very near 
to His people, and that they might look for 
“ greater things than these.” The question 
asked by Solomon at the dedication of the 
temple, ‘* Will God indeed dwell on the earth ?”* 
seems to have haunted the minds of devout 
people, and helped to attune them to a state of 
expectancy which the Gospels clearly indicate.+ 

We have to take account of this condition of 
things if we are to understand what the first 
Christians thought of Christ and—what is even 
more important—the light in which He claimed 
to be regarded by them. It prepared men for a 
disclosure. It enabled them to see that the 
perfection of human nature, as they recognized 
it in all that He said and did, could not explain 
the secret of His personality. He was man, 
indeed—man at his best; but, as we shall try to 
show, while they felt this, they realized that 
manhood could not account for heights and 
depths of character that now and again revealed 
themselves, nor for self-disclosures of His own 
which, though they proceeded from the lowliest 
of men, seemed to place Him on the throne of 
God. 

* I Kings ‘viii. 27. 
Tt St. Luke iii. 15 (of St. John iv. 25, 29). 


142 JESUS CHRIST 
We shall therefore proceed to enquire: 


I. What Christ said about Himself; what 
He claimed to be. 
II. What His first followers thought and 
believed about Him. 


I. It is very generally admitted that Christ 
regarded Himself as the subject of prophecy, and 
as the Messiah for whom His people had waited, 
with varying degrees of expectancy, through 
the greater part of their history.* If He had 
not done so, it would be difficult to explain the 
extreme importance which the Apostles attached 
to the proof that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth 
was none other than the looked-for Messiah.y7 

But our Lord put forth a higher and a wider 
claim than that of being the Jewish Messiah. 
He styled Himself “Son of Man.” Whatever 
may be the precise value and meaning of this 
self-chosen title—a question much debated— 
there is little doubt that Christ adopted it in 
preference to ‘ Messiah,” not in order to reject 
the latter title—for that He never did—but 
because the latter title was too much involved 
in the political and mundane aspirations of the 
Jewish people. He Who came to save the world 
was the crown and glory, not merely of a separate 


* St. Mark xiv. 61, 62; St. Matt. xxvi. 64. 
+ Acts ii. 36; iii. 15, 18; vii. 52. 


SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 143 


nation, but of mankind as a whole: “ the Son of 
Man,” at once the offspring and (to use a later 
term) the representative, in His own Person, of 
the whole race. 

So far we have not gone outside the limits 
of pure humanity in our statement of Christ’s 
claim to be Messiah and “Son of Man.” But 
He made a far greater demand on the faith and 
allegiance of men. It is quite certain that He 
thought of Himself as “ Son of God ”’ in the sense 
of an unique relationship shared by no one else. 
This appears from the expression, “ My Father.” 
He makes a sharp distinction in speaking to His 
disciples between “My Father” and “ your 
Father.”* There is the same connection in 
name and in the exercise of paternal love, but 
a whole world of difference in the inner and 
essential relationship. 

In the one case, Sonship is due to creation and 
adoption; in the other, it is a necessary element 
of the Godhead, an eternal relationship, so that 
God has always been Father as the original 
source of all being, and Son in respect to its 
expression. For perfect love and goodness must 
find an outlet for its exercise; hence the fact of 
the Eternal Son, who, though said to “ go forth ” 
from the Father, to be “sent” by Him, is yet 


* Of. St. Matt. vi. 1, 14, 15, 26 with St. Matt. xviii. 10, 
19, 35; St. John viii. 19, 28, 38, 54. 


144 JESUS CHRIST 


ever with Him,* bound by the spirit of love and 
unity, the Holy Spirit, who thus forms a third 
‘Person ” in that Divine Society which is God. 

But we gather that our Lord made this claim 
to be in an unique sense Son of God, not only 
by inference from His use of terms, but from His 
express declaration. Challenged at the supreme 
crisis of His career, as He stood before the Council, 
** Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ?”’ 
He said, ““ILam.” It was on the resulting charge 
of “blasphemy” that He was condemned. f 
There is the same consent to the application of 
the title in His reply to the confession of St. Peter 
at Caesarea, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
the living God ”’; “ Flesh and blood hath not 
revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is 
in heaven.”’{ It implies full assent to the truth 
conveyed, irrespective of the question whether 
St. Peter was conscious of the full meaning of 
his words. 

In the triple Synoptic accounts of the Baptism 
and the Transfiguration we have the testimony 

* St. John i. 1, rpds rdv Ocdr, “¢ourné ou dirigé vers 
Dieu,” J. Réville, Le Quatr. Hvang., p. 98. 

7 St. Mark xiv. 61, 62; St. Matt. xxvi. 63-66. 

{ St. Matt. xvi. 16,17 (cf St. Mark viii. 29). Christ con- 
firms the relation in which St. Peter acknowledges that He 
stands to God with the words, “‘ My Father which is in 


heaven,” an indication of the priority of the Matthean 
source of the incident. 


CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS SONSHIP 145 


of the Eternal Father. In each case Jesus is 
acknowledged as “‘the beloved Son.”* ‘There 
can be no question that this voice from heaven, 
confirming the verdict of His own consciousness 
of Sonship, as it was gradually developed in the 
course of His experience of life, was intended to 
be, and actually was, a message of strength and 
comfort to the human heart of Jesus—an external 
sanction to the movements and impulses of His 
own spirit as it responded to the Father’s love. 

This consciousness of a divine and unique 
Sonship made itself felt in several ways. 

He speaks as one who is perfectly at home 
with all the mysteries of the Godhead. His 
knowledge of the Father is on a complete equality 
with the Father’s knowledge of Himself, and this 
is the ground of His capacity to be “ the perfectly 
sure revealer of the whole wealth of divine 
mysteries.” He speaks, not merely as a man 
singularly possessed by the Holy Spirit, but, if 
we accept the assurance of the disciple who 
knew Him best, as “God only begotten, He 

* The term dyaryntos appears to mean “only.” Cf. 
Gen. xxil. 2 (Ixx.). 

+ Dalman, ‘“ D. Worte Jesu,” p. 232; vide St. Matt. x1. 27; 
St. Luke x. 22, a passage derived from the earliest Gospel 
source, “‘Q.” It tends to prove the authentic character 
of the type of saying which the Fourth Gospel attributes to 


Christ, ‘‘ He that seeth Me, seeth Him that sent Me,” and 
others similar (St. John xii. 45; xiv. 9). 


146 JESUS CHRIST 


Who is in the bosom of the Father.”* He is thus 
the exclusive bearer of revelation. All our 
knowledge of God comes through Him. His 
authority is original and it is supreme, for it is 
that of God Himself. He is “the Truth.” All 
heaven lay open to Him. Hence, all that He 
said of life and death, of God and man and 
man’s salvation, was said out of the fulness of 
knowledge. Christ as the teacher of divine 
things was infallible. “We speak,” He says 
of Himself and those taught by Him, “ that we 
do know, and testify that we have seen.”} If 
He were not sure and unerring, He could be no 
guide to the wandering soul of man. We should 
still be waiting for one who could speak the 
decisive word on human life and destiny. 

Tn all things pertaining to His mission from 
the Father He was infallible, unerring. But 
infallibility is not the same thing as omniscience. 
Though He came from God He lived here as man 
and, with His humanity, He accepted certain 
limitations on the full exercise of all His divine 
powers. He expresses surprise and He asks 
questions, clearly for the purpose of obtaining 
information.t He used the language of His 
time, or He would not have been understood. 


* St. John i. 18, according to the true reading. 
T St. John iii. 2. 
t St. Mark vi. 38; viii. 5, and parallels; St. John xi. 34. 


CHARACTER OF HIS KNOWLEDGE 147 


It is a mistake to expect from Him decisions 
on literary or scientific matters that would be 
in advance of the current thought. There is no 
trace in the Gospels of any willingness to relieve 
men of trouble by forestalling the results of 
study and inquiry, or to provide them with a 
royal road to learning. There were many things 
of which He Himself was ignorant, as His 
questions show. He had one end in view when 
He came among us—the glory of God in the 
salvation of man; and for this His knowledge 
and His authority were complete and _ all- 
sufficing. 

But nothing discloses the Deity of the Lord 
Jesus so clearly as the wonderful assumptions 
which permeate His teaching. Himself‘ a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief,” accepting 
without a murmur the place between two thieves 
which the world assigned to Him, “ meek and 
lowly of heart,” as He owned Himself to be, He 
speaks, when He has cause, as from the very 
throne of God. To what order of being do you 
assion one who can look a whole sorrowing, 
sinning world in the face and say, “ Come unto 
Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest ’?* Surely if to that of 
manhood merely, even at its best and highest, 
you must be repelled by the effrontery of the 


* St. Matt. xi. 28. The “I” is emphatic in the Greek. 


148 JESUS CHRIST 


saying. Yet, from all you know of Him, that 
is a position in which you cannot acquiesce; and 
the experience of all who have taken Him at His 
word will uphold you. Or, again, what is the 
status before God and men of one who, looking 
forward to the Day of Judgment, when the Son of 
Man shall come in His glory, proclaims that the 
decisions of that day will turn on one thing—our 
service, or lack of service, to Himself in the 
persons of His “ brethren.’’ Here, too, the 
thought of mere manhood, exalted to however 
high a degree of excellence, is hopelessly in- 
adequate. The idea shocks. It is safe to say 
that a religion based on claims such as these, if 
put forward within the ranks of mere humanity, 
would not have outlived the generation which 
was deluded by them. Nothing so revolts our 
sense of what is right and fitting as the inordinate 
pretensions of an overweening pride. But of this 
we can detect no sign in the bearing of Jesus 
Christ. 

And here we touch on another characteristic, 
which is quite inexplicable if He was no more 
than man. Always, as we follow His footsteps, 
there steals upon us the conviction that here is 
one who is without sin. Twice, at least, He 
makes this claim.* “For Him, all men are 
sinners; He has no wounded conscience. They 

* St. John. viii. 46; xiv. 30. 


SINLESSNESS 149 


need repentance and forgiveness; He does not.”* 
But to be sinless is not to be without capacity 
to feel for the sinner and to enter into his case. 
Already, before His ministry began, Christ had 
been brought face to face with sin. Temptation 
had assailed Him, and continued to do so all 
through. He knew, as none other, the awful 
nature of what, in its excess, is a “ departing 
from the living God.’+ But it remained out- 
side. His inner life was untouched. His human 
will, free to yield, stands firm. No discord mars 
the serenity of His bearing. The sins that He 
denounces—and who is so unsparing as He in 
face of the hypocrisy and hardness which block 
every avenue of grace ?—are without Him. 
Between the Reprover and the reproved there 
is a difference which cannot be bridged. The 
sinless Son of God and the sinner in his sin are 
in this wide as the poles apart. Goodness is the 

possession of God alone.t And this Christ 
~ claims to share. 

* Von Soden, “ Die wichtigsten Fragen,” p. 91. 

+ Heb. iii. 12. 

+ St. Mark x. 18 has been interpreted to mean a repudia- 
tion of moral perfection by Christ (Pfleiderer, Weidel, 
etc.). It is nothing ofthe sort. Our Lord will take no idle 
compliment. Goodness in its perfection is the property oi 
God alone. ‘‘ Why callest thou Me good ?’”’ The question 


is to make the young ruler think. It draws his attention 
to the Person with whom he is conversing, like those other 


150 JESUS CHRIST 


Now, in all these self-disclosures there is con- 
fessedly a spirit of assertiveness which is quite 
unparalleled in history. No one else has put 
forward such claims among the sons of men. 
They cannot be explained away. They lie em- 
bedded in the oldest Gospel sources, and as soon 
as the men who first heard and wondered at them 
have organized themselves into a Church, 
charged with a commission to go and make them 
known to all the world, it is Christ and these 
clams of His that form the staple of their 
preaching, His Name into which their converts 
are baptized. How is this to be accounted for 2 
History is the grave of hollow pretensions by 
whomsoever they are put forward. But history 
has given its sanction, and admitted that the 
claims are well founded; while the Church points 
to them as the ground of her existence, and goes 
on her way with the song: “Thou art the King 
of Glory, O Christ; Thou art the Everlasting Son 
of the Father.” He has been taken at His word. 
No demand of faith and allegiance put forth 
by Him has been refused. We ask again, Howis 
this to be accounted for ? 


UIA Gee ecneraeartere ee 
questions, “Whom do men say that I am 2” (St. Mark 
vill. 27), “ What think ye of Christ 2?” (St. Matt. xxii. 42), 
He should consider what his words imply if brought to 
the test of reality. Christ probes the imputation. He 
nowhere rejects it. 


CROSS AND RESURRECTION 151 


Certainly not through the mere impression 
made upon the first disciples by the character 
and teaching of Jesus, great as that impression 
was. Christianity was not built upon the 
Sermon on the Mount, nor upon the effect of a 
daily intercourse with a mind of singular purity 
and elevation. Doubtless the influence of com- 
panionship with Him formed a necessary step 
in the attainment of their subsequent. belief. 
But there was the Cross—that overwhelming 
catastrophe, for which, as they acknowledge, 
all His warnings had left them quite unprepared. 

To those who loved Him best it seemed the 
end of all things. Where now were the claims, 
the intimations, the veiled allusions which had 
so perplexed while they attracted them? “ We 
trusted that it had been He which should have 
redeemed Israel, and beside all this, to-day is 
the third day since these things were done.’’* 
They do not complain—the spell of His presence 
is still upon them; but they have well-nigh lost 
all hope. And then comes the Resurrection, 
with all it meant of vindication of His claims, 
of confirmation of His teaching, of explanation of 
His purpose. Then these great sayings were 
not the ebullitions of a vain, self-centred en- 
thusiasm. Those acts of healing and of benefi- 
cence were not the work of one who was playing 

* St. Luke xxiv. 21. 


152 JESUS CHRIST 


apart. His trust in God, His constant reference 
to the Father’s will, His days of labour and 
nights of prayer, were not so much struggling 
after effect. He is risen. He has overcome 
death. And sayings hardly noticed and never 
understood come back to their minds. Putting 
together all they had learnt in their daily ex- 
perience of His companionship—all the humility, 
with all the majesty of His bearing, His tenderness 
and His strength, His love of children and His 
courage and endurance under wrong—putting 
all these recollections of the past beside the 
wonder of His re-appearing and the joy of once 
again beholding Him in His glorified manhood, 
they own Him Lord and God.* 


II. We cannot stay to trace the steps by which 
the disciples arrived at this stage of their 
religious experience. They were rapid in the 
case of certain elect souls, who had been to 
school with the prophets and spiritual leaders of 
their people. Others were slow in apprehension, 
and were chided for their dulness by the Saviour 
Himself. 


* St. John xx. 28. 

T Luke xxiv. 25. This double strain of perceptiveness 
is a stumbling-block to some of the critics, who, thinking 
that they can find a progressive receptiveness in the Synoptic 
Gospels, are inclined to doubt the truth of the early con- 
fessions which are a characteristic feature of the Fourth 


THE EARLIEST GOSPEL 153 


But one thing is clear. The belief that Jesus 
was Christ and Lord and, in a sense shared by 
no one else, the Son of God was already the 
possession of the Pentecostal Church when, under 
the influence of the Holy Spirit, it came forth 
with its message of salvation. 

The Gospel of the Apostolic Church—the 
“ good tidings ”’ that it proclaimed to the world— 
was from the first the Gospel of a divine Saviour. 
We can call two witnesses to prove this allega- 
tion: the preaching of St. Peter on and shortly 
after the Day of Pentecost, and the conviction 
of St. Paul that his teaching in no wise differed 
from that of the primitive Apostles.* To 
St. Peter, whose thought is dominated by the 
effect of the Resurrection, Christ is ‘‘ the Prince of 
life’; “He is Lord of all’; “ both Lord and 
Christ.”— We may be sure that when engaged, 
after Pentecost with showing that “the Son 
of the living God” was identical with Jesus of 


Gospel. As a matter of fact, the quickness of apprehension 
recorded by St. John rests on evidence quite as secure as 
that of the slowness of perception to which the Synoptists 
bear witness. “The idea of progress, when allowed to 
dominate the mind, is as fatal to the formation of sound 
judgments in historical theology as in other matters.’’ 
With the early receptiveness of St. John the Baptist and 
Nathanael compare that of Simeon as recorded by St. Luke. 

* Gal. ii. 2, 9. 

{ Acts iii. 15; x. 36; 11. 36. 


154 JESUS CHRIST 


Nazareth, he did not go back upon his con- 
fession at Caesarea Philippi.* To St. Peter 
Christ is Lord, a title applied in the Book of Acts 
both to God the Father and to the Son. 

St. Paul came into this heritage of faith at 
his conversion, a year or two after the Resur- 
rection. It was the same Gospel that he began 
to preach: “I delivered unto you first of all 
that which also I received.”+ When he came 
to compare notes with those who were in Christ 
before him, and “‘ communicated unto them that 
Gospel ”’ which he had been preaching, they had 
nothing to say against it, for they gave him ~ 
“the right hands of fellowship.”t He claims 
to have received his Gospel “ by the revelation 
of Jesus Christ,” and to be indebted for it to no 
man.§ But the pomt to be emphasized is the 
complete agreement of his own Gospel with 
that of the earlier Apostles. Now we have every 
means of knowing what St. Paul’s Gospel was. 
One outstanding feature of it was the divine 
personality of the Redeemer. Therefore, in 

* St. Matt. xvi. 16; St. Luke ix. 20. It is untrue to the 
evidence to say with A. Meyer that “ to the Jewish primi- 
tive community Jesus was still a human Messiah.” Lepin 
is nearer the mark: “ The Christ of the first days of the 
Church is the Son of God, sharing in the powers and privi- 
leges of God, the Christ all Divine.” 


AME tha rele ar Dye H t Gal. is. 9; 
§ Gal. i. 12. 


ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL 455 


addition to the testimony of St. Peter, we have 
the witness of St. Paul that the primitive Gospel 
of the Apostolic Church implied the Godhead of 
Jesus Christ. It was into this faith, and nothing 
short of it, that the first converts on the Day of 
Pentecost and henceforward were baptized. 
Christian baptism, as soon as it was practised, 
as it could not be until after the descent of the 
Holy Spirit, was always in the Name of Jesus, 
and carried with it the promise of the Spirit. 
Who this Jesus was St. Peter plainly declares in 
the first Christian sermon—“ both Lord and. 
Christ.”* But it is to St. Paul that we owe 
the first attempts to bring together and to 
harmonize the different conceptions which attach 
to the terms “ Jesus” and “Lord” when ap- 
plied to Christ. He is the earliest New Testament 
writer to state in clear terms the truth, which 
St. John tells us was taught by our Lord Himself, 
of His pre-existence with the Father.f He is the 
first writer who declares plainly that Jesus is 
God.{ 

Thus, from the very heart of the earliest 
Christianity, within a few years of the Cross 


* Actsii. (cf. verse 38 with verse 36). 

{ Gal. iv. 4, “ God sent forth His pons Coli He 
is before all things.” 2 Cor. viii. 9, “ Though He was rich, 
yet for your sakes He became poor.” 

t Rom. ix. 5; Phil. ii. 6 (cf. Acts xx. 28; Tit. ii. E3). 

12 


156 JESUS CHRIST 


and the Resurrection, comes that truth about 
the Person of our Lord which we connect with 
His incarnation. In other words, when men 
had time to think about Him under the guidance 
and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they at once 
perceived that He Who had moved among them 
during His ministry, Who appeared to Saul 
outside the gates of Damascus, was not merely 
the flower of humanity, the product of an age- 
long development, the pride and crown of His 
race. He was not so evolved from the bosom 
of humanity that He owed nothing to any force 
outside of it. On the contrary, His appearance 
among men was an incursion from another world 
than this. He ‘‘ was with God” and He “ was 
God” from all eternity; but “in the fulness of 
time,” at a certain moment in the procession of 
the ages, He was “sent forth” from the side 
of the Father, laying apart the glory which He 
had with Him “before the world was,” and 
“took upon Him the form of a servant, and was 
made in the likeness of men.”* 

It is a great mystery. In the Person of His 
Son, God has consented to subject Himself— 
the infinite, eternal God—to the conditions of 
a finite life in time. In order to lead that life, 
without ceasing to be what He had ever been, 
He took to His unchanged divine personality 

* St John xvii. 5; Phil. ii. 7. 


THE MYSTERY OF HIS PERSON 157 


human nature. He “was made flesh,” “‘ He 
emptied Himself” (of His glory). And yet, 
in this life of humiliation and self-sacrifice, there 
dwelt in Him “all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily.’’* 

This, then, is the answer of the primitive 
Christian community to the question, “ Who is 
this ?” EKmbodying the personal experience of 
the Apostles, taught by the Spirit, confirmed 
“with signs following,” it is the only answer 
that has been found to satisfy the conditions 
under which Christ manifested Himself to the 
world. He appeared a man among men. 
Otherwise they could not have consorted with 
Him. His glory was veiled, withdrawn from 
sight, or they could not have endured His 
presence. Yet such was His indissoluble union 
with the Godhead that He could say, “He that 
hath seen Me hath seen the Father ”; “ I and My 
Father are one.’’} Those who looked upon Him 
saw God. The self, the ego, the personality 
was divine, made bearable to the society of men 
by taking to Himself man’s nature, in which He 
lived a true human life, suffered, died, rose again, 
ascended, and ever liveth at the right hand of the 
Father. 

Only gradually did the first Christians arrive 


* Col. ii. 9. 
7 St. John xiv. 9; x. 30. 


158 JESUS CHRIST 


at this conception, compelled to it by facts of 
their own experience as reasonable beings. 
Through knowledge of Him as man, they came 
to see that Manhood failed to furnish a category 
within which the actualities of His life and 
character could be contained. He was con- 
stantly transcending human nature. Not that 
He ever so acted as to do violence to what is best 
and greatest in Manhood. But now in a strange 
word, hardly understood at the time, yet coming 
back to memory under some spiritual stress or 
strain; now in an act which showed that all the 
resources of heaven were at His command; now 
by a mode of bearing Himself that was quite 
indefinable, and that attracted while it amazed 
them,* His followers were led irresistibly to the 
conviction that in Him they had had to do with 
one whose inner life lay within the circle of the 
Godhead. And so they came to worship Him— 
Him, the lowliest of men—and were not reproved. 

The reconciliation and adjustment of the 
thoughts which jostled and surged in their 
minds they did not attempt. They were per- 
suaded that He was Man, yet more than Man. 
It was reserved for later times and for subtler 
intellects to reduce the seemingly incompatible 
elements of His personality to a system. Even 
St. Paul, with all his training in Rabbinical 

* St. Mark x. 32. 


FAITH OF THE EARLY CHURCH 159 


scholarship, his Greek learning, and his almost 
unequalled power of thought, if he had the 
capacity, did not try, to arrange in an ordered 
whole the constituents of his belief. 

Faith came first, a faith that carried with it 
every force of heart and will. Theology as a 
science, a body of reasoned knowledge, was to 
come later. This order is natural. Appre- 
hension of separate facts must always precede 
their co-ordination into the framework of a 
science. We should not demand from the 
Church of the first days what it is unreasonable 
to expect. Believers had their own experiences; 
they led their life, and they gave forth their 
message that others might share their certainty 
and enjoy their peace. “That which we have 
seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also 
may have fellowship with us.”’* 

With ourselves in these later days things are 
different. We have not to work our way pro- 
gressively from the Manhood to the Godhead 
in order to know Christ as our Saviour and Lord. 
We shall have our difficulties if we are serious 
thinkers. But we enjoy this advantage: in our 
Baptismal Creed and in every ordinance of our 
religion, as well as in the completed canon of 
Scripture, we have the full truth presented for 
our acceptance. 

* 1 St. John i, 3. 


160 JESUS CHRIST 


But that which comes to us on the authority 
of Church and Bible has to meet the shock of 
contact with enquiry and criticism carried on 
under conditions very different from those of 
the time when the facts and the truths of the 
Christian Faith were being proclaimed by the 
Apostolic Church. Historical criticism has 
become a science, although its rules are con- 
stantly being set at naught by those who most 
loudly appeal to it. We have learnt to dis- 
tinguish the primary and secondary values of 
the sources underlying our present Gospels. 
We have found that no great religion can be 
safely studied in isolation, and without reference 
to the light thrown upon it by comparison with 
the other religions with which at any period of 
its career it has come in touch. 

In view of all this change of method and 
outlook, it is often asked whether we are justified 
in holding the Creed of our Fathers with the 
conviction that it is grounded in Holy Scripture, 
as well as in the personal experience of holy 
lives in every age of the Christian Church. 

“The answer is in the affirmative.” The 
critical study of the documents and the rigid 
application of new tests to the verdicts of history 
have only brought out into clearer light the 
Deity as well as the Manhood of our Lord and 
Saviour, Jesus Christ. 


Vill 


THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
By PERCY GARDNER, D.Lrrr. 


Tue foundation of Christian morality has been 
laid by Jesus Christ Himself so clearly and so 
strongly that it is beyond doubt or denial. 
Man, He said, has two duties: First, a duty to 
God, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind, and with all thy strength aaa, 
second, a duty to man, “Thou shalt love thy 
neighbour as thyself.” These two command- 
ments are not put side by side as equally im- 
portant, but an immense stress is laid on the 
first; it is the great commandment, and the 
second is but complementary to it—that 1s 
to say, all morality is to be rooted and grounded 
in the love of God; even the love of one’s fellows 
derives from the love of God its power and its 
sanction. This is very noteworthy. Most 
ethical writers discuss man’s duties, his duties 
to his family, to his friends, to his fellow- 
citizens; and then try to find for such duties 
a religious ground, to show that the service of: 
16 


162 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


man 1s really a religious service. But there is 
a deep contrast between the way of the moralist 
and the way of Jesus in two respects. In the 
first place, the service of mankind is spoken of 
by Jesus as an offshoot and a consequence of the 
service of God; and, in the second place, He 
tegards all service as only duly carried out when 
it is rooted and grounded in love—love of God 
in the first place, and love of man in the second 
place. 

Thus arose the great feature of the earliest 
Christian teaching, which has been called by 
the author of “ Ecce Homo ” the enthusiasm of 
humanity. It was not so much the love of 
individuals, or even of humanity, as a love for 
the divine in every man, and the conviction that 
everyone, however perverted or degraded, could 
not wholly lose the divine element in his nature, 
which was worthy of infinite regard. And this 
enthusiasm, working like leaven, procured in 
time the victory of Christianity. 

The precepts of Jesus concern us more in their 
relation to religion in practice and the ethics of 
the Church than in relation to their historic 
setting. But the historic setting also is a matter 
to be considered. The context shows that both 
the clauses of His ethical basis are quotations, 
and meant to be quotations, from the Jewish law, 
The clauses do not occur together in the books 


THE GOD OF ISRAEL 163 


of Moses; one is to be found in Deuteronomy 
and one in Leviticus, and the putting together 
of them was, as Mr. Montefiore has pointed out, 
a brilliant innovation. But the phrase as to 
the love of God in particular was, in fact, the 
nearest approach to a creed which Israel ever 
possessed, and it was constantly repeated at 
Jewish assemblies, so that it must have been 
familiar to every hearer. It expressed the 
fundamental devotion of the race, and its mission 
in the world, the conviction of a spiritual power 
in contact with man, a power devoted to righte- 
ousness, which inspired man with every power 
and virtue which he possesses—that is, through- 
out, the line taken in the Jewish Scriptures. It 
was God or the Divine Spirit who gave strength 
to Samson and wisdom to Solomon; who put 
words of power into the mouths of the prophets 
and valour into the hearts of the warriors of 
Israel. ‘‘ The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” 
was the exclamation of Isaiah. “I was no 
prophet,” said Amos, “ neither was I a prophet’s 
son, but I was a herdman and the dresser of 
sycamore trees; and the Lord took me from 
following the flock, and the Lord said unto me, 
Go, prophesy unto My people Israel.” This 
overshadowing power, this very present help in 
trouble, was the inspirer of Jewish religion. And 
love for such a power, a love absorbing every 


164 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


human faculty, dominated the leaders of the 
Jewish race. It finds constant expression in 
the Psalms: “I will love Thee, O Lord, my 
strength ”; “ Ye that love the Lord, hate evil ”; 
‘‘ My heart and my soul crieth out for the living 
God.” 

Thus it was no new commandment which the 
Saviour gave to His Jewish hearers, but it was 
a new and loftier reading of a commandment 
with which they were familiar. And no one 
used to Jewish literature and history could doubt 
that the love of the deity whom they recognized 
was intense in the race; that it bore them through 
innumerable pains and troubles, brought back 
the nation from exile, sustained it amid bitter 
persecution, was its salvation and perpetual 
refuge. 

But there is this to be said about love, that 
it grows up far more readily and is more easily 
sustained when the object of it is near and 
concrete. It was the limitation of the idea of 
God in Israel, its simplicity and anthropo- 
morphism, which made love easy. A deity of 
the tribe and confined to the tribe, a deity who 
bestows worldly prosperity on his votaries, a 
deity who is thought of as closely like man 
himself, may become an object of intense 
affection even to the most ordinary people. 
Every Jew felt that if he fell away from Jehovah 


THE LOVE OF GOD 165 


he would cease to have any right to exist, would 
be without help and hope in the world. When 
the Saviour and His disciples raised the idea of 
God, so that the power they proclaimed was no 
longer merely Jewish, no longer merely anthro- 
pomorphic, but the creator and preserver of the 
world and all who dwell in it, the love of God 
became less easy, less simple, and the reaching 
up to it more difficult and far higher from the 
spiritual point of view. 

If, then, we accept the general view of 
morality set forth by the Founder of Christianity, 
what does it imply ? In the first place, what 1s 
this love of God, which is to be the basis and 
spring of action? What the love of our fellow- 
men is we all know in greater or less degree, 
for every man who is not a monster or a 
demon cherishes love for some person or other. 
But the love of God! Is it not some exalted 
state, reached perhaps by a few saints, but 
quite beyond the reach of those who mingle 
daily with the world, who have their living to 
make, who go on from day to day in a routine 
which is not of their own choosing, but which is 
fixed by the society in which they dwell? One 
can think of the love of God as a predominant 
motive in the case of St. John, St. Francis, 
Thomas 4 Kempis, Father Damien among the 
lepers. One can think of such men as these as 


166 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


constantly inspired and lifted up by a love of 
God so pure and so urgent that it had become 
to them a second nature, and they lived in it ag 
an atmosphere to breathe. If they lost it, they 
would be like shells from which the kernel has 
been taken, like corpses from which the vital 
breath has departed. But we are not of that 
kind, nor capable of such a noble transfiguration. 

Yet it is quite clear that when the Saviour 
spoke as He did of the love of God, He was not 
addressing or thinking of such rare and ex- 
ceptional souls. He was addressing a throng of 
very ordinary Jews, an audience of average 
people such as might be found in the streets or — 
in Hyde Park. Not that He came down to their 
level, or diluted the pure spirituality of His 
teaching to the thinness of daily life. But 
clearly He intended His words for them, thought 
that they bore a meaning for each of them, and 
that each could appreciate that meaning if he 
chose seriously to try to grasp it. He was 
stating fundamental facts of human life and 
conduct—facts not obvious, but certainly true— 
the truth of which would appear to all who 
reflected. The love of God, of which He spoke in 
language so calm and deliberate, was not out 
of the reach of all but a few people of highly 
spiritual nature, but at the door of every heart 
and close to the spring of every will. 


THE LOVE OF GOD 167 


That love is the most potent of all urgings 
towards action is a simple fact of psychology. 
Everyone knows how easily any deed is done 
when love prompts it. This is true in everyday 
life. We may help our friends from a con- 
scientious principle, but we can do so with 
infinitely greater ease and far greater eflect 
when we desire to please one we love. In the 
case of moral conduct also, if we act from a 
motive of love we are far more efficient and far 
happier. We may call to mind a memorable 
saying in “ Eece Homo”: “No heart is pure 
which is not passionate; no virtue is safe which 
is not enthusiastic.” 

But Jesus transformed the love which the 
better sons of Israel bore to God by infinitely 
raising and expanding the idea of God. He made 
a new revelation of God by showing His followers 
that God was infinitely worthy of being loved, 
and thus Jesus laid the foundation of a new 
religion. He proclaimed that we should love 
God because God first loved us, that the Father 
in heaven is the source of every good, and that 
His providence watches over every moment of 
our lives. And, further, the life of the Saviour 
on earth was a practical exemplification of the 
love of God; ‘‘ God was in” Him “ reconciling 
the world to Himself.” The doctrine of the 
Incarnation was worked out and put into words 


168 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


at a later time, but it was built upon the love 
of Jesus for men, His suffering and dying for 
men, His revelation of God as the only object 
of the highest phase of love. And the love of 
mankind was in the life of the Saviour so closely 
blended with the love of God that it grew with 
it as two plants may grow from one root. 

But let us turn from the primitive revelation of 
Christianity to the Spirit of Christ as working 
in the modern world of thought and action. 
What does the love of God mean for us ? 

There are two radically different ways of 
regarding what the Greeks called the ecumené— 
the world of our fellow-men. The first is the 
way of secularity, which regards it as the sum 
of virtue to improve the physical and social 
conditions of the society in which we live. The 
secularist places the love of one’s neighbour at 
the apex of virtue, and considers that to help 
him is the whole of morality. The first precept 
of Jesus, to love God more than one’s neighbour, 
he sets aside as either an unmeaning phrase or 
as a pernicious perversion, the invention of 
priests and visionaries. 

The immediate results of thus turning the 
eyes of conduct from heaven to earth, of giving 
up the divine sanction and the ideal character 
of goodness, are visible enough in the modern 
world wherever we turn our eyes. Such re- 


OPPOSED TO SECULARISM 169 


striction is openly defended by the secularist 
moralists. Mr. Belfort Bax, for example, 
writes: ‘‘ According to Christianity, regeneration 
must come from within. The ethics and religion 
of modern socialism, on the contrary, look for 
regeneration from without, from material con- 
ditions, and a higher social life.’ There is the 
contrast in a nutshell. The secularist thinks 
that morality can be established by legislation ; 
that strikes are the chief means for securing the 
happiness of the proletariate; that State regula- 
tions as to housing and drainage and hygiene 
will produce not only a healthy but a happy 
people. The Christian thinks that God is the 
Source of all good, and that it is by working with 
God that man can improve his surroundings, 
first by striving for what is just and kindly in 
thought and action, and as a result in improving 
physical conditions also. 

We may see by observation how the secularist 
principle, in setting the love of our neighbour 
before, and in the place of, the love of God, 
tends by an inevitable law of human nature to 
the degradation and demoralization of a society. 
For it sets aside ideals, shuts out the view of the 
infinite heaven above us, and makes us look 
with the eyes of practical materialism on the 
lives of people about us. Thus, more and more 
the visible and concrete—that which can be seen 


170 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


and measured—becomes the one standard of 
conduct. One sees that better houses, more 
palatable food, more provision for ease and 
enjoyment, are the things which men most 
obviously desire and strive for. Social service 
becomes the systematic effort to improve the 
outside of men’s lives. And since all these things 
can be provided by money, the search for it 
becomes the one absorbing object of life. Aftera 
while, even the ends are lost sight of in struggling 
for the means by which they can be attained. 
Everyone is battling eagerly for wealth: the 
meaner souls that they may spend it on their 
pleasures; the nobler souls that they may pro- 
mote the physical well-being of their friends, 
their class, or it may be their town and their 
country; and in the battle for wealth, one after 
another the ideal purposes of life are set aside 
and disregarded. “Is not the life,” said Jesus, 
“ more than meat, and the body than raiment 2” 
But in the struggle for wealth, men will easily 
disregard their bodies and their lives. The 
community is beset on the one side by the 
reckless and devastating competition of capl- 
talists, and on the other by the hard selfishness 
of trades unions, which pursue their ends in 
complete disregard of the general good. Hence, 
an utter eclipse of real values and universal 
striving for material advantages. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD 171 


One of the earliest recorded sayings of the 
Saviour, when He was hungering almost to 
death, is, “Man shall not live by bread alone, 
but by every word which proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God.” And all the rest of His ministry 
was devoted to the setting forth of the will of 
God, the doing of which is as necessary to man’s 
real life as the bread is to the body. He taught 
that there exists, around and beneath the visible 
world, an ideal realm where God’s will prevails, 
where righteousness and beauty and truth are 
the dominant principles; and that it is the 
primary duty of every man to do something to 
realize that world upon earth, to transmute the 
visible order of society into an ideal order, to 
bring down the city of God on to the earth. 
And as love is the source and origin of all life in 
the world, so the love of God, He taught, is 
the source of all higher and ideal purpose. It is 
only by loving the divine ideas that we can 
be stirred up to work for them, to suffer for 
them, to live in them. Only by such love do 
men become united to God, and through God 
to all men who love and live for the Kingdom. 

But in reality the love of God, thus interpreted, 
belongs not only to the lofty spiritual natures, 
the mystics of the cloister, but in a greater or 
less degree to everyone who has in him the least 


spark of spirituality. Even the secularist 
13 


172 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


moralists, whatever they may say, do, in fact, 
usually accept ideals. They do not really be- 
lieve that man can live by bread alone. Every 
touch of unselfish devotion has really in it 
something of the ideal. When a son or daughter 
accepts a more painful or a more narrowly 
limited kind of life in order that he may save 
a parent, he acts not merely for the love of that 
parent, but also for the love of God, even though 
he may not in words recognize God. When an 
artist refuses to be content with mere con- 
formity to the popular taste, but endures penury 
in order to strive after the ideal in art, he shows 
that he loves God. When a man of science 
“ scorns delights and lives laborious days,” and 
even ruins his health, in order that he may learn 
more of the secrets of nature, he shows that he 
loves the God who is behind nature. When a 
lover sets aside the passion which burns in him 
in order that he may meet a call of duty, or in 
order that he may avoid any degradation or 
defilement of the loved one, he works by a higher 
love than human, and does something to bring 
in the Kingdom of God on earth. The call of 
the Kingdom is constantly sounding in every 
life, and in every day of our lives we are helping 
or hindering its appearance. 

It is very likely that many or most men, 
when they are moved towards the higher life 


LOWER AND HIGHER MOTIVE 173 


by the urging of the ideal, would deny that they 
acted for the love of God, but put forward some 
far more trivial and mundane motive. This is 
the way especially with Englishmen, who in 
their quiet, inexpressive way look askance at 
all profession of high motives, and regard such 
profession as a mark of priggishness or of 
hypocrisy. Many of the men who were really 
swayed by high motives when they threw up 
professional prospects and the most cherished 
hopes of their lives to undergo the bitter hard- 
ships and cruel dangers of the Great War would, 
if asked why they had done so, merely say: “I 
wanted to do my share.” “I could not hold 
back when others came forward.” “I am not 
a cur.” In old days people spoke of hypocrisy 
as the homage paid by vice to virtue; but with 
us hypocrisy is often the homage paid by virtue 
to convention. We are so shy and s0 averse 
from boasting that we English constantly repre- 
sent our motives as lower than they really are. 
But we must try to look beyond lofty preten- 
sions on one side, and cynical disparagements 
on the other, into the truth of things. And if 
we do so, we shall see that men cannot give up 
what they greatly desire, or undertake what they 
bitterly dislike, without some urgent motive. 
And all, except the thoroughly sordid, have 
beneath the surface a spring of idealism. When 


174. THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


they see clearly the ways leading upwards and 
downwards they will usually choose the former. 
“We needs,” says Tennyson, “ must love the 
highest when we see it.” ‘T’o many or most men, 
probably, the leading of the ideal would be 
represented by the thought of those whose 
opinion they valued; they would see the ideal 
reflected in human friends. But this does not 
really alter the case. When we walk by moon- 
light, we really walk by sunlight reflected from 
the moon. 

The Founder of Christianity, in nearly all 
His utterances, contented Himself with stating 
the great underlying truths of religion. He did 
not attempt to apply them to practice, so as 
to form a moral code for conduct. In the eyes 
of Jews and Mohammedans it is a great defect 
of Christianity that the Founder did not draw 
up any scheme of duties or lay down any 
definite rules. The Mosaic books and the Koran 
contain a quantity of rules and regulations for 
daily life, rules which every adherent of the 
founders is bound to keep unless he would 
become a renegade. Undoubtedly the absence 
of an ethical code in the Gospels does make 
Christianity a more difficult religion for weaker 
brethren. But, on the other hand, it makes 
the religion capable of an infinite development, 
a constant adaptation to the temperament of 


A SPIRITUAL ESSENCE 175 


nations, of Churches, and of individuals. It was, 
as it was first preached, an essence which had 
to be diluted before it became fit for general 
preaching and acceptance. It was a spiritual 
religion, which might be embodied in more than 
one religion of authority or institution. And 
if the Founder had departed and left His deposit 
of teaching to be adapted to the conditions of 
the world by the unaided work of His followers, 
or of various groups of followers, the flowing 
spring of Christianity might have been divided 
into innumerable little channels, which might 
soon have disappeared in the sands. But the 
Spirit of Christ worked in the world after the 
visible Christ had departed, worked as a con- 
stantly active leaven, transmuting all values, 
conquering all opposing forces, establishing in 
the world a visible Church which carried on the 
work of the Founder and remoulded society. 
The Church was never really undivided; from 
the beginning there were visible diflerent 
tendencies, and even when most at unity in itself 
the Church was never infallible. It suffered 
from all sorts of human frailties and short- 
comings; it very soon became contaminated 
by the world which it was leavening; it suffered 
from want of wisdom, want of courage, want of 
charity. But, on the whole, it kept burning in 
all ages the torch which the Founder had lighted. 


176 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


The divinely kindled enthusiasm was never 
wholly wanting, even in the darkest period of 
the Middle Ages. 

The first to set seriously about adapting the 
pure spiritual teaching of the Saviour to the 
frame of mundane society was St. Paul. St. Paul 
had probably never seen Jesus in the flesh, nor 
heard Him speak; yet he was inspired by Christ 
to develop and adapt the spirit of His teaching. 
For him also the love of God was the root and 
ground of all goodness, and the Christian code 
of morals, which he was the first to draw up, 
arose from the application of the spirit of Christ 
to the conditions of life in the social world. 
St. Paul, whether we regard his spiritual en- 
thusiasm, his keenness of intellect, or his practical 
good sense, was one of the greatest men of genius 
who ever lived. But his genius was shown, not 
by the promulgation of an entirely new scheme 
of duty and ethics, but by the adoption of what 
was best in the world of the time, and baptizing 
it into Christ, transmuting it by the Spirit of 
Christ into something of a higher type. The 
domestic and private morality of the Jews was, 
at the time, at a far higher level than that of 
the Gentile world; and it was therefore natural 
that St. Paul should build on Jewish foundations. 
It has been the domestic and family morality 
of the Jews which has preserved the nation amid 


———— 


ADAPTATION BY ST. PAUL 177 


the terrible persecutions which the race has 
endured. And it is St. Paul’s adaptation of that 
morality which has preserved Christian society 
from the laxity in sexual and social affairs which 
brought about the ruin of the ancient world. 
But it could not have exercised this saving 
influence if it had not been based upon the love 
of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Stoicism, 
the highest morality of the Graeco-Roman world, 
never had much influence beyond a narrow circle 
of the enlightened. But the Pauline morality 
was adapted to all classes. 

Of course, St. Paul, in his practical rendering 
of the precept, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
as thyself,” was not infallible. Indeed, he 
expressly disclaims all infallibility. And in some 
respects, according to modern thinking, he made 
mistakes by supposing that the existing social 
conditions—slavery, for example—were per- 
manent, whereas they were defective and 
transient. But the world’s debt to him is 
enormous. On his foundations the Christian 
Church by degrees built up a system of morals, 
which, however defective, is incomparably the 
best which has ever been put forward. At the 
Reformation no great changes were wrought in 
it; it was the Roman venality and materialism 
against which the great reformers revolted. 
There were in those days revolts against Christian 


178 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


ethics; but they were local and partial, and they 
were put down by the general voice of the 
Churches, Roman and Reformed. To-day there 
is a much wider, if a less definite, revolt against 
Christian morality, a revolt which has for the 
moment gained the upper hand in Russia, and 
which is strong in all the countries of Europe. 
But up to now its power has only been critical 
and solvent; it has never succeeded in setting 
up a new system of ethics, and, in fact, has never 
seriously tried to do so. It has assumed that 
if the old landmarks of morality are removed, 
an ideal state of things will immediately ensue. 
This is, of course, a delusion, almost an insanity. 
One cannot venture to say that it is not possible 
that some un-Christian frame of society may 
hereafter be discovered which may endure, but 
it is fair to say that no frame as yet suggested 
would have the least chance of endurance. All 
the new Utopias are built up, as was the first and 
greatest of them, in Plato’s Republic, without 
any due regard to the essential facts of human 
nature; and they can no more stand than a 
house can stand which should be built in disregard 
of the law of gravity. “Every plant,” said 
Jesus, “which My heavenly Father hath not 
planted shall be rooted up.” And so it has 
proved in every age. All attempts at a non- 
religious scheme of ethics have been overwhelmed 


LITERAL ACCEPTANCE 179 


by degeneration and decay. The most notable 
of them, the attempt at the French Revolution 
to put liberty and equality in the place of the 
service of God, led in a few years to the military 
tyranny of Napoleon and to a great reaction. 
Among the conflicting currents which appear 
on the surface of the troubled ocean of modern 
ethical tendency one must command, at least, 
the respect of all Christians. This is the en- 
deavour to work back to the actual precepts of 
the Founder of Christianity, and to find in them 
a remedy for the selfishness and blindness of 
mankind. In particular, men of blameless 
character and profound earnestness, especially 
among the Friends, have turned to the Sermon 
on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel as a guide 
in the darkness. Their tendency has been to 
preach non-resistance of evil; that instead of 
fighting our enemies we should suffer in patience; 
instead of punishing crime we should try to 
convert the criminal by kindness; that we should 
regard all men, even yellow and black men, as 
brethren, and make love of all the ruling principle 
in life. One mentions these enthusiasts with 
respect, for some of them certainly have gone 
through suffering for their principles. But their 
position is one which a little consideration shows 
to be hopeless. In the first place, they are never 
consistent. Some of the precepts of the Sermon 


180 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


on the Mount they accept; others they simply 
ignore. They go to prison rather than bear 
arms; they endure theft rather than appeal to 
the law; they devote themselves to works of 
mercy and kindness. They are ready not to 
resent injuries, but do they give to everyone 
that asks, and lend to every would-be borrower ? 
In that case all private property would be 
doomed. Tolstoy, who had the candour to 
acknowledge this fact, made over all his property 
to his wife, who supported him: an obvious 
subterfuge. Non-resistance of evil and refusal 
to possess property has been sometimes practised 
in the world by small and devoted societies. 
It was accepted by the mendicant orders of the 
medieval Church, for a short time by the original 
society of Christians, and long before by the 
Buddhist monks of India. But to pretend to 
accept literally the precepts of the Sermon on 
the Mount, while living in a comfortable house 
and engaging in business in the world, is a mere 
self-deception. They are obviously inconsistent 
with any ordered civil society, unless interpreted 
with regard to conditions. 

We cannot in this age of the world throw 
aside the experience of the Christian Church 
through all its ages of existence, and go back 
to the simple and child-like surroundings of the 
first century. Perhaps serious attempts to do 


NEED OF INTELLIGENCE 181 


so in any age may help the world by a vision of 
pure and simple life. But it is much more to 
the point in the present complex state of society 
that those who call themselves Christians should 
in business rigidly observe the laws of honesty 
and honour, should devote such wealth as comes 
to them to high and ideal ends, and banish from 
their homes greed and luxury. Plain living and 
high thinking with charity will bring men 
nearer to the spirit of the Master than asceticism 
and the shirking of duties to society, except in 
the case of a few devoted souls to whom the way 
of asceticism may be the road to life. 

In the ethical life of our time there is a thing 
quite as necessary as good intention and en- 
thusiasm. That thing is a quiet and impartial 
intelligence, which will consider in a dry light 
the results of various courses of conduct in 
order to determine which are justified. The 
teaching of the Saviour in the Sermon on the 
Mount requires as a supplement His teaching 
that all principles of action must be judged by 
their fruits. To regard the consequences of 
beliefs was the Christian way long before it was 
the way of the Utilitarians. The difference 
between the Christian and the secularist Utili- 
tarian is not in method, but in estimate of values. 
The secularist considers only consequences which 
can be seen and measured, and which belong to 


182 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 


the outward conditions of life. The Christian 
believes that life develops from within; that 
health in the souls of men will produce happiness 
and a nobler order in society; that it is the 
striving after the ideal, and not a struggle for 
the good things of life, which really helps. And 
although at present the enormous increase of 
wealth and spread of comfort have given undue 
advantage to the spirit of materialism, yet it is 
not in the nature of materialism permanently to 
satisfy the spirit of man. And we have only to 
look around us to see to what a quagmire it 
leads. Setting out to improve the circumstances 
of life and to produce wider happiness, it only 
succeeds in enthroning envy, jealousy, and dis- 
content in our midst. In the last century the 
hunt for material prosperity was carried on by 
capitalists without regard to moral considera- 
tions. The earth far and near was exploited 
in utter disregard of the claims of other races, 
and of the degradation and squalor of the town 
worker. Even slavery was tolerated by most 
Christian countries. We are reaping the harvest 
then sown. The pursuit of wealth in disregard 
of moral considerations has spread to all classes 
of the community, and has had its natural results 
in short-sighted egotism, in dislike to steady 
and honest work, in the conflict of classes and 
the unsettlement of the financial world. And 


kt eae 


PRESENT DANGERS 183 


the enmity and jealousy between nations seems 
even to be increasing, and threatens to wreck 
the noble efforts to establish a League of Nations, 
and to bring in a danger of terrible future wars. 
The way to a settled order must needs be long 
and difficult, and can only be followed if our 
leaders combine wisdom and moderation with 
a better and kindlier feeling between man and 
man. 

It is easy to see the perilous condition of the 
modern world, and it is tempting to try short 
cuts towards the reconstitution of society. 
But we have to deal with facts as they are: the 
consequences of past lines of action cannot 
be easily set right; rather, they can only be 
remedied by high idealism combined with steady 
and persistent study of facts and of human 
nature. The Christian doctrine, that man is 
a spiritual being, and that society can only be 
healthy when it is based on the love of God and 
man, is eternally true. 

As there is a widespread distrust between 
classes, so there is a general rebellion against 
the ethical teaching of the Christian Churches, 
which is accused of being unreal and out of date. 
Especially in regard to the morality of sex there 
is extreme unrest, and a readiness to try reckless 
experiments. But anyone who considers how 
the future morality and even the future existence 


184 THE ETHICS,;OF CHRIST 


of the race is deeply involved in these matters 
will be unwilling to upset the family morality 
laid down by early Christianity, and more or 
less dominant in Europe ever since, unless it 
can be clearly shown to be inconsistent with 
happiness and with human nature. Mere revolt, 
unless it leads to a new and stable order, can 
lead to nothing that is good, but may easily lead 
to race suicide. But these are matters too great 
and difficult to be dealt with in so slight an essay 
as the present. They can only be rightly ap- 
proached by a Christian heart combined with a 
scientific mind, on the possibility of which 
combination the future of Europe depends. 


IX 


CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
By HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.D., D.Lirr., D.O.L., LL.D. 


THERE was a time when Christians were disposed 
to think of morality as a set of rules arbitrarily 
imposed upon mankind by God, and com- 
municated to them in a series of supernatural 
revelations which were to be accepted solely on 
the evidence of miracles historically proved. 
This was never in its full extent the view of the 
greatest minds in the Church. The greatest 
Christian teachers have all with one consent 
believed in the existence and authority of 
conscience. Most of them have recognized 
the existence in the human mind of a power of 
seeing for itself what was intrinsically right or 
wrong. Most of them have believed in the view 
of Bishop Butler, that there is “‘a superior 
principle of reflection or conscience in every man 
which distinguishes between the internal 
principles of his heart, as well as his external 
actions: which passes judgment upon himself 
and them; pronounces determinately some 


actions to be in themselves just, right, good; 
185 


186 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


others to be in themselves evil, wrong, unjust: 
which, without being consulted, without being 
advised with, magisterially exerts itself, and 
approves or condemns him, the doer of them, 
accordingly.” They have seen in this power a 
revelation of God’s will, indeed, but not of an 
arbitrary will. They have taught that God 
commands things because they are intrinsically 
right; not that they are right simply because 
God commands them. ‘ God’s nature,” in the 
words of the great Anglican theologian Hooker, 
“is a law to His actions.” Still, in spite of this 
teaching, there has been at some periods, even 
among the learned, and there still survives in 
popular conceptions of Christianity, a disposition 
to think of Christian morality as consisting In 
a number of arbitrary rules imposed from 
without by an external authority like Acts of 
Parliament or the commands of a General. 

I need not dwell upon the causes which have 
led to the abandonment of this way of looking 
at the matter. More and more Christians are 
disposed to treat revelation in the region of 
ethics—whether the revelation contained in the 
deliverances of the ordinary conscience, or the 
higher degree of revelation which comes through 
the great teachers and prophets of mankind— 
as a gradual development and enlightenment of 
man’s natural, but none the less God-derived, 


CONSCIENCE 187 


power of seeing the difference between right 
and wrong, and to base the authority even of 
Christ Himself very largely on the supreme and 
unique appeal which His teaching makes to the 
heart and conscience of mankind. It would be 
difficult to find a modern argument for the 
divinity of Christ which does not make much 
of the fact that now, after the lapse of nearly 
two thousand years, the fundamental principles 
of Christ’s moral teaching appeal to the con- 
sciences of the best men as no less true than when 
they were first taught by Him. In the details of 
morality there has necessarily been continual 
development, continuous fresh applications to the 
changing needs and circumstances of successive 
ages; but when we look back at the most modern 
developments of Christian ethics, we can see 
how they are all really implied in the teaching 
of Christ, and the Christian will be disposed to 
see in this process a fulfilment of the promise 
that the Holy Spirit, working in the minds 
of men, and especially in that society of 
Christ’s followers which we call the Church, 
should “take of Mine, and shall declare it 
unto you.” 

lt is extremely important that we should 
recognize the necessity of such change and 
development in the details of morality. If it 
were claimed that Christ put forward a body of 

14 


188 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


detailed rules which should be equally binding 
upon all men at all times and in all stages of 
civilization, philosophy and ordinary common 
sense alike would protest against the possibility 
of such a code. What im detail any man ought 
to do in any complication of circumstances must’ 
depend upon a multitude of conditions, and 
these conditions are ever changing. It would 
have been impossible for a teacher who lived 
in an age which had no hospitals to lay down 
how much we ought to give to them, to insist 
upon the observance of sanitary laws at a time 
when such laws were unknown, or to give rules 
for the punishment of offences which should be 
equally suitable to the most barbarous and the 
most civilized state of society. No rules could 
deal with the infinite variety of circumstances 
and social conditions; had such rules been given, 
they could not have been understood, nor could 
they well, without a perpetual miracle, have 
been handed down to us unaltered. No religion 
which professed to supply such a detailed in- 
fallible code could possibly have become a 
universal religion. One of the great qualifica- 
tions which Christianity possesses for being 
a universal religion—a religion equally adapted 
for all times and for all nations—is the 
fact that its Founder made no such attempt, 
and confined Himself to laying down a few general 


SUPREMACY OF LOVE 189 


principles of life and conduct. All else in His 
teaching takes the form of illustration or ap- 
plication to the simplest cases and the circum- 
stances of His immediate hearers. 

What, then, were these principles? They may 
all be reduced to the two great rules of love 
to God and love to one’s neighbour. These rules 
were not unknown to the Jewish morality of His 
time. They are laid down in the most legal book 
of the Jewish Scripture—the Book of Leviticus— 
and the best of the Rabbis were quite alive to 
their supreme importance. But the morality 
taught by the Scribes and Pharisees laboured 
under two great defects: (1) It was the tendency 
of Jewish ethics to treat “my neighbour” as 
meaning—at least, in the full extent—at most 
“my brother-Jew”’; and (2) the Mosaic law 
practically put on a level with eternal moral 
principles a multitude of ceremonial rules—laws 
about avoiding contact with a corpse, about 
sacrifices and offerings, about abstaining from 
certain kinds of food. Our Lord did not positively 
tell His hearers not to observe these rules; He 
observed them Himself when they did not 
interfere with the higher law of love, though not 
with the punctilious strictness upon which 
the Pharisees insisted. But He laid down 
principles which must, when they came to be 
thoroughly appropriated, lead to the sweeping 


190 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


away both of Jewish exclusiveness and of Jewish 
legalism. “That which entereth the mouth 
cannot defile the man.” These words contained 
the death-knell of the whole system of clean 
and unclean meats which was vital to Pharisaic 
religion, and constituted the great barrier be- 
tween it and the Gentile world. It was especially 
the teaching of St. Paul which brought home 
to the Church what was really implied in this 
teaching of its Founder. He taught that the 
Mosaic law was not binding upon Gentiles at 
all, and it soon ceased to be observed even by 
Jewish Christians. 

When we say that all Christian morality can 
be reduced to these two great principles, it must 
not be supposed that the value of Christ’s 
teaching preserved in the Gospels is limited to 
the bare enunciation of these principles. The 
value of the Gospels to us consists, not in the bare 
enunciation of the “‘ Golden Rule,” but in the 
penetrating originality with which Jesus Christ 
brought out the full meaning of the rule, the 
way in which He applied it to the regulation, not 
merely of outward conduct, but of desire and 
motive and aspiration, and the thoroughness 
with which He attacked and pushed aside 
principles and ideas which were inconsistent 
with it. The Stoics had taught the duty of 
universal benevolence, but they never taught it 


THE TEACHING OF CHRIST = 191 


with the force and persuasiveness with which 
it is taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan. 
Rabbis had taught that love includes forgive- 
ness, that God is forgiving, and that men should 
be so too; but they had not taught it so simply 
and beautifully as Jesus in the parable of the 
Prodigal Son. Hardly ever, if ever, had it been 
taught before that, if love is to be universal, it 
must extend to enemies (whether national or 
private enemies) as well as friends. We cannot 
fully appreciate the moral revolution introduced 
into the world by the teaching of Christ without 
dwelling in detail upon His most memorable 
sayings and parables, and on His applications 
of the great law of love to such matters as the 
love of enemies, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, the 
danger of riches, humility, purity, repentance, 
the duty of making others better as well as 
happier, the duty of avoiding “ stumbling- 
blocks,” the danger of hypocrisy. But for this 
there will be no space in this short essay. Our 
special subject is the application of Christian 
morality—that is to say, the fundamental law 
of universal love—to social problems. And this 
application may most conveniently be dealt with 
by discussing briefly some of the objections 
commonly made to our Lord’s teaching when 
considered as a practical rule of conduct for 
modern communities. 


192 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


1. The Use of Force——It is often contended, 
sometimes by Christians—by the Society of 
Friends, for instance, and in a more consistent and 
extravagant way by such modern Christians as 
Count Tolstoy—that Christ intended altogether 
to forbid the use of force, and that no one can ~ 
really be a consistent disciple of Christ without 
condemning all punishment, all war, all re- 
sistance to force. Is this the true meaning of 
His teaching? In reply to this question I would 
say: 

(a) Jesus Christ was an Oriental teacher, and 
it is natural to an Oriental teaching Orientals 
to teach by means of paradox, by startling 
sayings never intended to be taken quite literally 
or without the modifications, exceptions, reserva- 
tions which the application of all general precepts 
to the details of practical life demands. 

(6) It is very easy to show that, in many cases 
where the literal application of His precepts 
strikes us as practically inconsistent with the 
welfare of society as we understand it, He could 
not have intended this command to be taken 
literally. We cannot suppose that He who 
taught that we are to love all men, even our 
enemies, meant us to take literally the command 
to hate father and mother. He taught that in 
certain circumstances to call a man a fool might 
be as bad as murder, because it might express as 


FORCE AND FORGIVENESS 193 


much hatred; yet He is reported on several 
occasions to have used the very word Himself. 
He said, “ Resist not the injurious person ”’; 
yet the “cleansing of the temple” was, in its 
way, an act of violence. We cannot suppose 
that, when He spoke of cutting off the offending 
member, He meant to recommend actual self- 
mutilation. We must therefore conclude that 
these paradoxical sayings were not intended to 
be taken as literal rules of action immediately 
applicable to the duty of all men in all circum- 
stances, but as illustrations of the duty of 
universal love. What He meant to condemn was 
the spirit of revenge, of personal or anti-social 
hatred. It is always right to love—.e., to desire 
the true good of every human being with whom 
we come into contact. In very many circum- 
stances love will prescribe the literal forgive- 
ness of injuries in the sense of submitting to 
loss, the not exacting of penalties, the returning 
of good for evil. In other cases the interests 
of society will demand resistance to illegal 
violence, the expression of resentment by word 
or deed, the demand for reparation, legal 
prosecution. What is the right conduct to be 
adopted will depend upon the circumstances of 
the particular case. One of those circumstances 
is the attitude of the offender. Sometimes our 
Lord’s own injunction to forgive is qualified 


\ 


194 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


by the condition that the offender repents of 
his wrong, and desires reconciliation: ‘‘ If he 
repent, forgive him.” The spirit of malice or 
personal revenge is always wrong. What the 
injunction to forgive means, when translated 
into the cold form of formal ethics, is ‘ Act 
in such a way towards the injurer as will best 
promote the true good—not the mere maximum 
pleasure—of the offender himself, and of all 
those other persons who are no less our neigh- 
bours.” Sometimes the true good of the offender 
himself will demand some expression of resent- 
ment or punishment: much more often that is 
demanded by the interests of society in general. 
“ Resentment,” as Bishop Butler puts it, “is 
not inconsistent with good-will; for one often 
sees both together in very high degrees, not only 
in parents towards their children, but in cases 
of friendship or dependence where there is no 
natural relation.” “The injured person ought 
to be aflected towards the injurious person in the 
same way any good man uninterested in the 
case would be, if they had the same just sense 
which we have supposed the injured person to 
have of the fault, after which there will yet 
remain real good-will towards the offender.” 
Butler, perhaps, hardly does justice to the way 
in which forgiveness—of the most literal kind— 
touches the heart and conscience of the offender 


PUNISHMENT 195 


and moves him to repentance. Nothing appeals 
to the better side of most men so much as love, 
and there is no such convincing proof of love 
as forgiveness of a personal injury—just because 
it is so hard. 

(c) It is easy to show that in many cases we 
have to choose between contradicting the letter 
of these paradoxical commands and proving 
unfaithful to the spirit of His teaching. To stand 
by while a ruffian brutally assaults a woman, 
on the ground that he is a man and a brother, 
and that we are bound to love him, would be to 
show the reverse of love to the woman, who is 
no less our sister. Habitually to allow criminals 
to go unpunished would be very bad for the 
criminals themselves. Christ always put moral 
well-being above mere pleasure and _self-in- 
dulgence; and such a policy would be injurious, 
and therefore unloving, to thousands of persons, 
no less our brethren, who would suffer if such 
indulgence should become universal. I assume 
that punishment must, from the Christian point 
of view, be remedial or medicinal, preventive 
or reformatory, not retributive. The “ retri- 
butive theory of punishment ”’ seems to me to 
be wholly opposed to the spirit of Christ’s 
teaching, as it is to the enlightened conscience of 
mankind, though it is frequently defended even 
at the present day by some philosophers and 


196 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


by theologians anxious to bolster up “ theories 
of the Atonement” which have no foundation 
in the teaching of Christ. 

2. The Question of War—KtUxactly the same 
principles which justify punishment within the 
State justify the waging of war by one State 
against another in certain circumstances. So 
long as no international tribunals exist for the 
adjustment of international quarrels, or so long 
as the habit of obedience to such tribunals is 
not generally established, war is the only means 
of defending the rights and liberties of one nation 
against an aggression on the part of another. 
Exactly the same principles apply to the employ- 
ment of force by one nation against another 
nation as apply to the use of force by the 
community against offending individuals. A 
Christian nation should go to war only when the 
common interest of all nations—not merely its 
own honour and glory, or even its own purely 
national interests—demands it. Patriotism is 
noble, because it represents devotion to the good 
of the community; but, as Edith Cavell said, 
“patriotism is not enough.” A Christian nation 
can only fight in the maintenance of rights and 
liberties which it is for the common interest of 
mankind to defend. And when the war is over, 
exactly the same principles which demand a 
forgiving spirit in the individual will be applicable 


PROPERTY 197 


to the settlement of terms of peace. For obvious 
reasons their application will be in many ways 
different, but the principle is the same. Terms 
of peace should be settled in the interests of 
human society generally, and the interests even 
of the offending nation must be given their due 
weight. After the conclusion of a righteous 
war, the punishment of an offending nation 
may often be demanded; but international 
punishments, like State punishments, must be 
preventive, deterrent, reformatory, not mere 
explosions of national hatred or revenge; nor 
must any attempt be made to impose upon the 
offending nation conditions which will involve 
permanent humiliation or unduly fetter its 
national development. 

3. Lhe Question of Property—The same people 
who suppose that Jesus Christ taught the duty 
of unlimited non-resistance frequently, though~ 
not always, hold that He taught also the duty of 
unlimited giving, and that no one can be a 
genuine Christian who does not divest himself 
of all his property, and lead the life of a wandering 
mendicant. Much the same considerations apply 
to this part of His teaching as to the case of non- 
resistance. Here, also, we may show that our 
Lord clearly did not lay this injunction upon 
all men. It must be remembered that (as 
M. Paul Sabatier has remarked) Jesus did not, 


198 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


especially in the earlier part of His ministry, ~ 
think of Himself as founding a new religion 
(though in point of fact He was doing that), 
but rather a new Apostleship. It was not all 
His hearers, not even all His converts, whom 
He summoned to join His missionary band 
and to engage in preaching the good news of the 
Kingdom of God to their fellow-countrymen. 
St. Luke alone, among the Evangelists, repre- 
sents Him as saying in a general form: “ He that 
forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My 
disciple.”* If He did use these words, and if He 
meant them to be taken quite literally, we must 
suppose that He meant them to apply only to 
those whom He called to be His “ disciples ” in 
the stricter sense, to those who were called to join 
His band of mission preachers. To lead the 
life of the mendicant friar was the form which 
the life of the religious teacher—the religious 
teacher anxious to proclaim new ideas-— 
naturally assumed in that age, and he would 
be a bold man who would say that he knows 
of a way in which the new truth about God and 
human life could have been preached better and 
more eflectively than the way which was actually 
adopted by Christ Himself. But He certainly 
did not lay down that such a mode of life was 
necessary to “salvation ”’ or (as He would rather 
* St. Luke xiv. 33. 


ATTITUDE TOWARDS RICHES — 199 


have put it) to entering the Kingdom of Heaven. 
The penitent publican went down to his house 
“ justified,’ though nothing is said about a total 
renunciation of property. When another 
publican or tax-gatherer, moved to repentance 
by His teaching, announced that he was ready 
to make fourfold restitution to those whom he 
had wronged and give half his goods to the poor, 
the Master pronounced that salvation had come 
to his house; He did not tell him that he could 
not be saved until he gave up the other half 
also. He did teach the perilousness of wealth; 
He did say that it was difficult for a rich man 
to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; He did not 
teach that it was impossible. There is nothing 
in our Lord’s strong sayings about riches to 
contradict our general conclusion that He con- 
fined Himself to the laying down of principles, 
and that the most detailed rules of action which 
He suggested were intended as illustrations of 
these principles. The universal principle is 
“love all men.” The ideal of the Christian life 
is to be willing to make any self-sacrifice for the 
good of others which is really demanded by 
the true good of human society. What kind 
of life, what use of riches, what social and 
economic arrangements are for the true good 
of human society is a problem upon which He 
did not enter. The most obvious application 


200 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


of the duty of love is to give, to lend, to feed the 
poor and clothe the hungry. But it is quite 
consistent with the spirit of Christ’s teaching 
to recognize that the literal and universal 
practice of these injunctions would not be for 
the true good of human society. Indeed, to 
attempt to practise them universally would be 
self-contradictory. An individual who gave away 
all that he had could no longer practise the duty 
of giving; a society in which everyone re- 
nounced everything and devoted himself to 
preaching would have no property at all, and 
all would perish of hunger. To give the in- 
dividual the means of living without labour 
would seldom be for his true good, even for his 
worldly, economic good, still less good for his 
character; to “ give to him that asketh ” in that 
way would obviously be fatal to the true interest 
of society. 

The enlarged social experience of modern 
times, the scientific study of human society and 
its needs, the discovery of “economic laws” of 
which the ancient and the medieval world knew 
little, have altered materially the detailed rules 
of conduct which a teacher thoroughly embued 
with the spirit of Christ’s teaching would 
prescribe, and which a society under the in- 
fluence of that spirit would practise. The duty 
of literally feeding the poor, clothing the hungry, 


MODERN CHRISTIANITY 201 


and tending the sick has not been in any way 
cancelled, though we have discovered more 
scientific and effectual ways of doing these 
things; but new duties have been revealed on 
which conventional Christian teaching has not 
much insisted. We have come to see that, if 
it is a duty to relieve disease, it must also be 
a duty to prevent it by sanitation, by improved 
housing, by the discovery and teaching of 
sanitary laws. We have discovered that, if it 
is a duty to relieve poverty, it must also be 
a duty to prevent the extremes of poverty 
occurring, and this cannot be done by mere 
individual assistance to individual cases, but 
by so organizing human society as to secure to 
all the possibility of earning enough material 
wealth to give them the opportunity of enjoying 
the higher goods of human existence. And so 
it has at last begun to be recognized that the 
precepts of Christ may, and should, inspire not 
merely private acts of individual beneficence, but 
the life of politics and trade, commerce and 
industry. And so we are beginning to see that 
a man may be as actively carrying on Christ’s 
great task of setting up the Kingdom of God 
among men by his work as a statesman or a 
town councillor, as a man of business or an 
author, as by adopting the career of a preacher 
or missionary or a professed philanthropist. 


202 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


The characteristic feature of the best Christian 
ethics of our day is that it tends to substitute 
a positive promotion of that ideal life of human 
society which Jesus called the Kingdom of God 
for the observance of merely negative rules of 
personal conduct or the performance of isolated 
acts of personal self-sacrifice. I cannot illustrate 
the point I am making better than by quoting 
a paragraph from Seeley’s great book, “ Ecce 
Homo,” which may now be considered some- 
what obsolete as a study of the historic life and 
teaching of Christ, but which has, I believe, 
lost none of its value as an interpreter of the 
Christian ideal in its application to the circum- 
stances of modern life. 

“We have advanced by eighteen hundred 
years beyond the Apostolic generation. All the 
narrowing influences which have been enumerated 
have ceased to operate. Our minds have been 
set free, so that we may boldly criticize the 
usages around us, knowing them to be but im- 
perfect essays towards order and happiness, and 
no divinely or supernaturally ordained con- 
stitution which it would be impious to change. 
We have witnessed improvements in physical 
well-being which incline us to expect further 
progress, and make us keen-sighted to detect the 
evils and miseries that remain. The channels 
of communication between nations and their 


DEVELOPMENT IN ETHICS 203 


governments are free, so that the thought of the 
private philanthropist may mould a whole 
community. And, finally, we have at our dis- 
posal a vast treasury of science, from which we 
may discover what physical well-being is and 
on what conditions it depends. In these cir- 
cumstances the Gospel precepts of philanthropy 
become utterly insufficient. It is not now enough 
to visit the sick and give alms to the poor. 
We may still use the words as a kind of motto, 
but we must understand under them a multitude 
of things which they do not express. If we 
would make them express the whole duty of 
philanthropy in their age, we must treat them 
as preachers sometimes treat the Decalogue, 
when they represent it as containing by im- 
- plication a whole system of morality. Christ 
commanded His first followers to heal the sick 
and give alms, but He commands the Christians 
of this age, if we may use the expression, to 
investigate the causes of physical evil, to master 
the science of health, consider the question of 
education with a view to health, the question of 
labour with a view to health, the question of trade 
with a view to health; and while all these in- 
vestigations are made, with free expense of 
energy and time and means, to work out the 
rearrangements of human life in accordance 


with the results they give.” 
15 


204 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


The weak point of conventional religious 
teaching in the past has been to limit the ap- 
plication of Christ’s teaching to the duties of 
private and family life, to occasional acts of 
private benevolence, or (for the few who take 
the commands of Christ very seriously) to the 
regulation of lives wholly devoted to religious 
teaching or works of charity. Sometimes this 
restriction has been formally enunciated, as 
when the late Archbishop Magee proclaimed that 
the Sermon on the Mount had no application to 
politics. Few really earnest Christians would 
say that to-day, though such language may still 
be used by ‘‘ men of the world.” 

4. Christianity and Socialism.—At the present 
day there is among thoughtful Christians an 
almost universal recognition that, if the Christian 
law of love is valid at all, it must be applied to 
the whole of life, political, economic, commercial. 
And under the influence of this attitude many 
are disposed to run to the opposite extreme, and 
definitely to identify Christianity with some 
particular programme of social or economic 
reform. Many, convinced that the true road 
to that ideal state of society which Christ called 
the Kingdom of God is some form of socialism, 
tend to identify Christianity with socialism. 
The youngest of our English diocesan Bishops 
in his still younger days laid it down that a man 


SOCIALISM 20D 


could not be a Christian without being a 
socialist. Of course, if by socialism is meant 
simply the doctrine that the welfare of society 
should be.the ultimate criterion of conduct, and 
if that welfare is understood to mean, not merely 
the maximum of pleasure, but the highest kind 
of human life—including the highest develop- 
ment of character, as well as the highest kind of 
happiness—then no doubt there is no harm 
in saying that the Christian is necessarily a 
socialist. But that is not what is usually meant 
by socialism. If socialism means a particular 
scheme of economic reorganization, then no 
doubt Christianity would, for a man who believes 
that such a reorganization will be the best means 
of securing that highest kind of life, include the 
duty of being a socialist, and trying to make 
other men socialists. But there are those who 
quite seriously believe that, at present or 
permanently, the true welfare of society—the 
truest good for the greatest number—is best 
secured by some other form of economic and 
social organization. To such a man Christianity 
will prescribe that he should not be a socialist. 
To represent Christ as a socialist is historically 
an absurd misrepresentation. It is equally un- 
historical to represent Him as teaching anti- 
socialism, because He habitually assumed the 
obligation of observing the rules of the then 


206 ~CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


existing social order. A voluntary renunciation 
of property is not socialism, nor is it ~ in- 
dividualism ” to teach that not everyone is 
bound to renounce all his property. If the 
question had been put to Him whether He 
approved of socialism or not, He would doubt- 
less have replied, as He replied to the man who 
asked Him to bid his brother divide the in- 
heritance with him, “ Who made Me a judge or a 
divider among you?” Seeing that the Kingdom 
of Heaven was not at all likely to be realized 
by a revolt against the Roman Government (to 
which the sect known as Zealots were instigating 
His countrymen), Jesus did “take part in 
politics’ to the extent of discouraging such 
schemes; but it was, He felt, no part of His mission 
to advocate any system of political reform.™ 
But because our Lord personally kept aloof from 
politics, it does not follow that modern men and 
women can be true followers of Christ if they 
do not bring their Christianity to bear upon their 

* We need not for the present purpose discuss the very 
difficult question how far the thought of the “‘ Parousia,” or 
‘“‘ second coming,” as destined to take place in the near 
future may have contributed to prevent His attaching much 
importance to questions of political organization. What 
is certain is that the Kingdom of Heaven was for Him 
primarily a certain spiritual condition of human society, 


and was not identified with any kind of political or social 
revolution. 


THE KINGDOM OF GOD 207 


politics. We may not identify Christianity 
with any particular scheme of social reform, but 
we must say that a man cannot be a Christian 
without applying the Christian law of love 
to his politics. And we may most confidently 
say that no scheme of political or social reform 
will ever bring about a true Kingdom of Heaven 
which does not include the acceptance and 
practice of His teaching. It is to my mind an 
exaggeration to say that if a human society were 
sufficiently penetrated by the Spirit of Christ 
there would be no social problem to solve; for 
even if all the members of a society desired each 
other’s good as fervently as Christ bade them 
do, there might still be difficult questions about 
the best means of realizing that good. Know- 
ledge and insight are required for the solution 
of social problems, as well as good-will. But 
it is true to say that the greatest social problem 
arises precisely from the fact that the most 
Christian statesman has to legislate for a society 
in which such mutual love is in the vast majority 
very imperfect, and nothing will contribute so 
powerfully to promote the removal of these 
difficulties as the wider diffusion and a more 
enthusiastic practice of that principle of mutual 
love or brotherhood which constituted the 
essence of Christ’s teaching. : 
D. Christianity and Culture.—There is one more 


208 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


objection to the ethical teaching of Christianity 
which I think it will be desirable to notice. It 
is felt generally, perhaps, by a different class of 
persons from those who urge the former objec- 
tions. The objection is, indeed, upon a higher 
level, and implies, to my mind, less misunder- 
standing of the true meaning of Christianity than 
the others. There are many who, while thoroughly 
in sympathy with the teaching of Christ and 
Christianity about human brotherhood, feel that 
in the Christian ideal as preached by the early 
Christians, and in most modern representations 
of it, there is too little recognition of the claims 
of knowledge, art, science, all that is commonly 
embraced under the name of Culture. They feel 
that, while the essence of true morality does lie 
in unselfishness, subordination of the claims of 
self to those of others, willingness to sacrifice 
self to any extent which the true interests of 
society demand, this is not the whole of life. 
In a true ideal of life there must be some 
recognition of the claims of “ self-realization ”“— 
or what is better called self-development—as 
well as of self-sacrifice. What are we to say to 
this suggestion ? 

First, as to our Lord’s own personal atti- 
tude. It is true that there is no express recog- 
nition of the claims of art, literature, science 
(used in the widest sense). It is vain to seek 


CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 209 


in the teaching of Christ any express sanc- 
tion for the value which modern cultivated 
Christians do attach to such things. We may 
point to the saying about the lilies of the field 
as an indication that our Lord was not blind to 
the beauty of the world. We may note that His 
mind was saturated with the literature of His 
country—a literature chiefly religious, but of 
high intellectual and esthetic rank. We may 
note that the most certain thing about Him is 
that He was condemned by the religious world 
of His day just because He was not in the 
ordinary sense of the word “ascetic.” He at- 
tached no high value to ecclesiastical fasting 
(which He certainly disparaged, if He did not 
altogether condemn it), We may point out 
that His religious and moral teaching implies 
thought, and thought of the very highest order. 
If we look at Christ (without any theological pre- 
suppositions) simply as a human teacher, we can 
see in Him intellectual development of the 
highest order; and there is nothing in His teach- 
ing which is opposed to the fullest recognition of 
culture as an element in the highest human life. 
He taught that a man should love his neighbour 
as himself—not, indeed, better than himself: 
that would be illogical, for the very considera- 
tion which imposes the duty of love and the 
intrinsic value of every human life implies the 


210 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


value of one’s own life. He taught that we 
should promote the true good of all mankind. 
But it did not lie within the scope of His mission 
to analyse that good. A few broad principles 
are all that He lays down. He insists upon the 
superiority of the moral and the spiritual above 
the pleasures of the senses. He insists upon 
sexual purity as.one of the conditions of that 
highest life which a man should seek for himself 
and promote for his neighbour, as something 
demanded by respect for oneself and respect for 
womanhood. Yet there is no condemnation of 
ordinary human pleasure, no suggestion that 
self-inflicted torture is meritorious or acceptable 
to God. He spent much of His life in the healing 
of bodily disease by spiritual means; He was not 
indifierent to human suffering or contemptuous 
of ordinary human joys. He put character, 
goodness above happiness, or (if we like so to 
put it) He made these things the most important 
part of human happiness. But as to the relative 
value of different kinds of pleasure, as to how 
far intellectual and esthetic pleasures should be 
regarded as of higher rank—more important 
elements in a true human life—than mere sensual 
enjoyments, He is silent. There is, however, 
nothing in His teaching which can prevent our 
recognizing the value of these things—on one 
condition: that we apply to this side of life the 


THE GOOD INCLUDES CULTURE 211 


principle which He laid down as applicable to 
the whole of life—viz., that whatever we regard 
as part of true human good for ourselves we 
must also try to promote for others also. A life 
of self-centred intellectual enjoyment or dilet- 
tantism is, indeed, anti-Christian. It is not 
inconsistent with the Christian ideal of brother- 
hood that we should spend some part of our lives 
in intellectual enjoyment; it is self-contradictory 
to say that it is a Christian duty to give others 
enjoyment and un-Christian ever to enjoy our- 
selves. And the higher the enjoyment, the less 
does that enjoyment imply “ selfishness.” But 
even the highest kind of enjoyment must be 
subordinated to social needs; we may take our 
share of them, but we must try to secure that 
our neighbour gets his share too. And therefore 
the devotion of a whole life to science, or art, or 
the like, can only be justified when the fruits of 
such devotion are in some way shared with 
others. The lives of the artist, the scholar, the 
man of letters, are Christianized by the services 
which they perform for society, even when that 
service consists merely in contributing to the 
enjoyment of truth and of beauty for their own 
sakes in other men, without any further utili- 
tarian results. 

This is one of the directions in which the 
teaching of Christ, if it is to be made the basis 


212 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


of a detailed code of ethics for modern life, 
requires development. Development in this 
direction, as in others which have been mentioned, 
may be recognized as part of that leading unto all 
truth which the Gospel itself bids us to expect 
from the work of the Holy Spirit in human 
society. How far has the Christian Church 
actually supplied the needed development ? 
To a large extent it has undoubtedly done so. 
The actual ideal of the best Fathers of the 
Church—most fully so in men like Clement of 
Alexandria and Origen, to a less extent in men 
like Ambrose and Augustine—includes a recog- 
nition of the claims of culture. The same may 
be said of the great schoolmen. All that was 
good in the moral teaching of Cicero and the 
Stoics, much of the thought of Plato, was 
embodied in the teaching of the Fathers. The 
schoolmen Christianized the ethical system of 
Aristotle. The Puritan ideal was not averse 
to philosophy and learning, if it was somewhat 
hostile to art. No doubt there has sometimes 
been a disposition on the part of the austerer 
teachers to justify learning and art, so far as 
they are justified, under cover of their direct 
services to religion and what is_ ordinarily 
called morality. No doubt it should be more 
clearly recognized than it has sometimes been 
that a due appreciation of the claims of truth 


DUTY OF TRUTH-SEEKING 213 


and beauty is part of the highest morality. At 
the present day this is more or less fully recog- 
nised by cultivated Christian theologians and 
teachers. But it must be admitted that the 
popular religious teaching of all ages has been 
deficient on this side. Too often popular 
religion has actually condemned all intellectual 
pursuits which have no direct tendency to 
edification. Still more often it has condemned 
art or some particular and arbitrarily selected 
forms of art, such as the drama or even the 
novel, 

And this tendency is by no means extinct. 
Outside the narrowest religious circles it seldom 
assumes the form of direct hostility to the 
pleasures of the ordinary cultivated man. It is 
to the higher manifestations of the intellectual 
life that “‘ the religious world ”’ is most indifferent 
or actually hostile—to the life and pursuits of 
the philosopher, the scholar, the enquirer 
into religious truth. “‘ Science” escapes con- 
demnation on account of its obvious practical 
utilities. But the discovery and proclamation 
of new truth about the universe in general, or 
about its history—especially when the new truth 
tends to the modification of some traditional 
theological belief—is still looked upon with 
dislike, suspicion, or positive hostility. It is 
constantly assumed that the man who questions 


914. CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 


a traditional belief is moved only by “ intellectual 
pride” or love of notoriety; and even Bishops 
of high academical record are found ready to 
suggest that, even when true, new ideas which 
are opposed to conventional opinion should be 
kept very dark. But it is not so much positive 
hostility as indifference to the claims of the 
intellect which is lacking in average religious 
teaching. During more than fifty years of 
church-going I have hardly ever heard from 
the pulpit—not very often even from the 
University pulpit—any insistence upon this duty 
of seeking for truth. The general tone of 
ordinary pulpit instruction and of ordinary 
religious literature suggests complete want of 
sympathy with this side of life. No doubt the 
main object of sermons is to enable men to 
resist temptations coarser, stronger, and more 
deadly than the temptation to think too little 
of truth. But, still, the common religious 
indifference to the pursuit of truth is one of the 
things which prevent many cultivated people from 
heartily identifying themselves with the Christian 
ideal, from taking an active part in Church 
activities, and, in particular, from attendance 
on Christian worship. And a vague feeling that 
the Church is not heartily in sympathy with 
much that is best and highest in modern ideals 
weakens its influence upon the more thoughtful 


TRUTH, BEAUTY, LOVE 215 


and educated minds in all classes. I have tried 
to ‘show that, while it has been chiefly the 
mission of Greece rather than of Juda to make 
men appreciate the intellectual side of human 
life, there is nothing in the teaching of Christ 
which should prevent our recognition of its 
claims, nothing in such a recognition which is 
incompatible with a whole-hearted following of 
Christ. No doubt righteousness, love, brother- 
hood, are the chief things; but truth and beauty 
are valuable too. They, too, must be included 
in the “ good” which Christ bids every man 
to give to others as well as to enjoy himself. 
And no interpretation of the Christian ideal is 
wholly true which fails to recognize the fact. 
The love of truth and of beauty comes from God, 
as well as the love of our neighbour. They must 
be recognized as elements in the character of 
God Himself, and of that likeness to God which 
represents the true ideal of human life. It is as 
possible to follow Christ by ministering to these 
higher needs of the human soul as by ministering 
to the elementary demand for food, clothing, and 
bodily health. ‘“‘ Man shall not live by bread 
alone ” has an application to the intellectual side 
of life as well as to the life of practice and of 
devotion. 


Xx 


MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: ITS BEARING. 
ON RELIGIOUS TEACHING 


By E. W. BARNES, Sc.D., F.R.S. 


PsycHoLocy is the study of the working of the 
human mind. As soon as men began to think 
about the sources and meaning of their thoughts 
and emotions, and to consider how in their minds 
they formed pictures of the external universe, 
they entered upon psychology. It is a difficult 
subject, for it is an attempt to use the human 
mind to analyze itself. In the investigations of 
natural science we use the mind to explore the 
properties of matter or the phenomena of life. 
Inert matter and living tissue are, we believe, 
lower types of reality, more primitive things, 
than human consciousness. So we expect that 
our intellectual faculties will enable us to 
discover the laws of their behaviour. The re- 
markable advance in our knowledge of physics 
and biology seems to prove the soundness of our 
assumption that the mind of man is not merely 
a by-product of living matter, but a new and 
higher type of reality which has come into being 


in recent stages of evolution. 
216 


CONSCIOUSNESS AND REALITY 217 


Now, if we possessed a something which repre- 
sented a still further evolutionary advance— 
some super-mind whose nature we cannot 
possibly imagine—we might expect to use it 
eflectively to formulate the laws of psychology. 
But we have no such faculty. We have to use 
the mind to explain the working of the mind; the 
instrument is not superior to the object. There- 
fore, as it seems to me, we cannot hope to solve 
the ultimate problems of human consciousness. 
We remain baffled, and we are likely to continue to 
remain baffled, when we attempt to demonstrate 
the reality of religious experience. Similarly, 
we cannot justify our belief that we form true 
pictures in our minds of the external world, 
neither can we prove that our criteria of beauty 
are right. We think that certain pictures, 
statues, or pieces of music are supremely beauti- 
ful: does our judgment correspond to the essential 
nature of the Universe? We cannot prove the 
fact. Neither can we prove that the material 
universe is anything like what we conceive it 
to be. All that we can assert is that we have 
certain aspirations, emotions, and mental re- 
actions set up by phenomena. These differ in 
different individuals, and, more markedly, as 
between races of men in different stages of 
civilization. We can compare the varied 
aspirations and emotions. We can see how they 


218 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


are changed and refined as development takes 
place. But we have to assume that such 
development is progressive—that is to say, 
that it leads men to a truer understanding of, or 
at least sympathy with, the fundamental nature 
of the universe. Yet there seems to be no way 
of justifying our assumptions. Psychology can- 
not, in this respect, change faith into knowledge. 

We must not, then, expect psychology either 
to confirm or destroy the value of the ultimate 
experiences on which religion is built. Man, 
when he reaches what we deem to be the highest 
level that he can attain, 1s compelled by some- 
thing inherent in his nature to believe that 
goodness, beauty, and truth express the inner 
meaning, the spiritual foundation, of the 
universe. Similarly, many men and women 
in whom this conviction is strongest have 
moments when they seem to themselves to 
pass away from the spatial and temporal world 
to another realm. In this realm they find, as 
they believe, God, the source and stay of all 
things, the ground of being. With Him there 
appears to be love and joy and peace, activity 
unmarred by evil, the perfection of the highest 
which it is given to man dimly to realize in his 
normal life. 

In so far as we individually have had religious 
experience, we cannot set aside our sense of the 


MECHANISM AND EXPERIMENT 219 


value of prayer. However we may explain the 
occurrence, we have known the transcendent 
widening of our horizon which sometimes comes 
in solitary meditation, the occasional flooding 
of the soul with light. Psychology cannot reduce 
these facts to hallucinations any more than it can 
demonstrate that our intuitions deceive us when 
they compel us to think that beauty, goodness, 
and truth reveal the nature of absolute reality. 
There is, however, reason to hope that psycho- 
logy will tell us something of how our minds 
work and describe their internal mechanism. 
It may be expected to show the relation between 
our spiritual instincts and other instincts, such as 
those of sex, which seem to be derived from our 
animal origin. We may discover reasons for 
the different ways in which spiritual funda- 
mentals are used, and come to understand why 
religious inspiration seems to unify personality 
and to show its unifying power in physical energy 
and well-being. 

Recent progress in our knowledge of the 
working of the human mind is due to the fact 
that psychology has been made an experimental 
science. The pioneers of modern research have 
experimented—sometimes dangerously—with the 
minds of their patients. They have elaborated 
theories to explain the results obtained, and 
they have then tested those theories by making 

16 


220 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


other experiments. It is necessary, however, 
to remember that, for the most part, the abnormal 
has been investigated to give a clue to the normal. 
Physicians have sought to discover how the 
mind functions by examining what has happened 
when it fails to function properly. Such a study 
of mental pathology has undoubtedly led to 
valuable results. But it may easily lead an 
investigator to believe that the abnormal is the 
normal. Freud, for instance, made the greater 

part of his experiments with patients in Vienna — 
drawn from a sexually-demoralized class. In 
consequence, he ascribes to sex a dominating im- 
portance in mental life which we claim to know 
from our own experience that it does not possess. 
The instincts which are necessary to the preserva- 
tion of the race are strong, but so also are 
those which preserve the life of the individual. 
Both types of instincts may be expected to 
combine with the consequences of spiritual per- 
ception. But to isolate sex and make it the 
eroundwork of our mental constitution is surely 
wrong. It suffices in this connection to say 
that social reformers value religion just because 
of its observed power to control animal appetites. 
Religion, save when it is transformed into a false 
asceticism, neither drives sex underground nor 
does it cause us to ignore the well-being of the 
body. It makes man whole, gives unity and 


THEORY AND OBSERVATION — 221 


balance to his life. ‘They that are whole,” 
said our Lord, in one of those ironical touches 
which gave point to His teaching, ‘‘ have no need 
of a physician.” “I came to call, not the 
righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 

It is important to dwell on the obvious beauty 
and strength of the Christian life, and on the 
permanent enrichment of personality which 
often results from what we term “ conversion.” 
Especially nowadays must we emphasize such 
facts, because there exists a widespread and 
wholly erroneous belief that, in some undefined 
way, modern psychology has disintegrated these 
truths. Let us insist that theories will not 
alter facts. Any theory, for instance, which 
does not satisfactorily explain the vast moral 
uplift due to the Evangelical movement of 
Wesley and his friends in the eighteenth century 
is imperfect. Theories are attempts to explain 
facts, and so long as they do not explain all the 
facts they are inadequate. Many modern 
theories put forward by distinguished teachers 
we must consequently regard as provisional; 
but the discovery of the subliminal part of 
personality or, as it is also termed, the unconscious 
mind must rank as a permanent addition to know- 
ledge. The very phrase “unconscious mind ” 
seems at first sight to imply a contradiction. We 
are tempted to think that we know of all that 


222 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


goes on in our minds. But—so modern teachers 
assure us—this is untrue. There are mental 
regions below manifest consciousness where past 
experience is stored, and where this experience 
is active, although we are not aware of the fact. 
We forget events of the past, but they do not 
necessarily cease to influence us. The experience 
of such events may remain with us, stored in the 
unconscious mind. The experience may have 
been unpleasant, its memory hateful. It may 
have been, as it were, thrust out of sight. But, 
though repressed so thoroughly that it has passed 
out of manifest consciousness, it may still be 
active below the threshold, subliminally. As, un- 
known to us, it there germinates, it may become 
the centre of a whole bundle of morbid ideas and 
emotions; it may, in technical language, form a 
repressed complex. And because this complex 
exists buried in the mind it will send up shoots 
into manifest consciousness. Thus arise im- 
pulses, of whose origin we are ignorant, which 
may powerfully affect our conscious lives. The 
crank and the lunatic will often reason with much 
shrewdness. On many subjects they may be 
sane. But certain false ideas they hold with 
invincible tenacity, the reason being that these 
ideas are products of the morbid processes 
that have been set up in the unconscious 
mind, 


THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 223 


This theory of the unconscious mind appears 
to be confirmed by the success of the process of 
mental healing which has been founded upon 
it. If the physician can discover the origin of 
the repressed complex, he can at times bring 
it into manifest consciousness. By getting the 
' patient to realize its existence, he can gradually 
lead him to destroy the morbid mental growth 
of which it has been the source. If he is success- 
ful, normal mental health will be restored. 
Moreover, this theory of the unconscious mind 
can be used to explain our inherited instincts. 
Undoubtedly, the past mental experiences of our 
ancestors contribute to some extent to make us 
what we are. We inherit mental tendencies. 
If we gave precisely the same education to the 
child of an Australian savage and to a child 
sprung from one of the English intellectual 
families, the results would be widely different. 
No doubt inheritance of physical structure, the 
contormation of the brain, and so forth, will 
in part explain the difference. But it does not 
seem possible in this way to explain all the facts 
of observation. We are, it appears, forced to 
the conclusion that our minds, below the level 
of consciousness, retain racial experience. This 
inherited experience combines with personal 
experience to make our personality what it is. 
Thus, in fact, are formed the data of the logical 


224 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


processes of our conscious minds, the stuff which 
is the basis of thought. 

Very naturally many psychologists are thus 
led to deny that we have free-will. They are, in 
philosophical language, determinists. [If we know 
all the forces which act on a material particle, 
we can predict which way it will move. And 
it is asserted that if we knew all the experience, 
inherited and personal, which has affected any 
individual, we could predict his every action. 
On this view there is no such thing as sin. 
Christians reply that the theory is not true to 
their own experience. We are not automata, 
for we can conquer temptation. We habitually 
exercise freedom of choice. There is in us some 
power of originating courses of conduct. Of 
course, we do not claim to be independent of 
our past. Hereditary influences are potent. 
Our present lives, moreover, are afiected by our 
past conduct. We are stronger for the conquest 
of past temptations. Character is weakened 
by past sins and follies. All this we admit; but 
still we have some measure of free-will. 

Moreover—and this is the primary Christian 
claim—we assert that both among personal and 
hereditary experiences we must include divine 
influence. How is it that man, evolving from 
some ape-like creature, has developed spiritual 
instincts? The fact cannot be denied. How is 


GRACE AND ITS ORIGIN 225 


it to be explained ? Only, so far as I can see, 
by the moulding influence of the Spirit of God, 
by the work of the Holy Ghost among men. 

There are times when we feel the power of 
righteousness, when we respond to it, when we 
know that we are the stronger and purer for our 
response. We are, moreover, convinced that 
by prayer and meditation we can enrich our 
personality; we feel that in such enrichment we 
have become more true to the purposes for which 
we were created; we have gained grace, spiritual 
power, which seems to have come from some 
infinite reservoir of enfolding love. The term 
grace has become old-fashioned. It has acquired 
an atmosphere of unreality. Christians badly 
need a more adequate doctrine of grace, and it 
appears probable that modern psychology will 
supply it. Natural grace, such as seems native 
to many children of good stocks, will be the 
result of divine influences on past generations— 
influences which have been inherited and stored 
subliminally. Acquired grace comes from the 
divine influences which we have personally 
received; the experience affects both the con- 
scious and, more especially, the unconscious 
mind. 

But, it may be objected, “no man hath seen 
God at any time.” We may, indeed, be sure 
that the search for goodness and truth is re- 


226 - MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


warded. Yet, save in most exceptional moments, 
we have never heard a personal God speaking to 
us; and even when we may think that we have had 
such a revelation, it may have been a delusion. 

Now, in answer, I would allow that we do not 
know God; at best, we get emotional intuitions 
of His nature. If we could know God perfectly, 
we should have no’need of revelation. Christ, 
we believe, did know God as fully as was possible 
for anyone who was perfect man to know Him. 
In fact, because our fragmentary intuitions of 
God find their completion in Christ’s revelation, 
we deem Him the Son of God. 

But how do those intuitions come to us? It 
is suggested that the unconscious mind is the 
region where we make contact with the Holy 
Spirit. If we agree, ag seems necessary to 
explain man’s spiritual evolution, that God 
directly influences men, and if, further, we admit, 
as I believe to be true, that normally we ex- 
perience only the effects of God’s activity, it must 
needs follow that communion with Him takes 
place below the level of manifest consciousness. 
It is in underground regions of the mind that 
His presence originates those spiritual impulses 
that are the foundation of the religious life. 
Our knowledge of God is thus secondary or 
derived knowledge: the primary experience is 
subliminal. 


WILL AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND 227 


It is sometimes objected that, if it be in the 
unconscious mind that we make contact with 
the Spirit of God, then by our own efforts we 
can do nothing to know Him. But this objec- 
tion rests upon a misunderstanding, As Christ 
taught, the pure in heart are they who see God. 
The unconscious mind is not normally an 
independent centre of consciousness; it is a part 
of the complete psychic organism, continually 
influenced by, and influencing, the mental states 
of which we are fully aware. To describe it as 
an ageregate of fringes of consciousness is 
inadequate, because experience stored there 
seems to be made the basis of logical processes 
of which we are unwitting. If, in ordinary 
language, we do not “ overcome,” but merely 
“thrust aside,’ evil acts or thoughts or dis- 
tressing accidents, the danger is that they will, 
though apparently forgotten, lodge in our sub- 
consciousness and be, as it were, the seeds of 
morbid mental growths which will contaminate 
manifest consciousness. If, on the other hand, 
we constantly seek to purify our minds, wrestle 
till we have overcome evil, dissipate bogies by 
“facing up to” them, we shall free our sub- 
consciousness from sources of infection. By 
constantly seeking for righteousness and strength 
we shall find them; and they will be established 
both above and below the threshold. When the 


228 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


unconscious mind is thus purified we have 
spiritual health, we are fit to receive the influence 
of the Spirit. 

This account of spiritual progress agrees, I 
believe, with commonly observed facts. “ Ask, 
and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; 
knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” ‘The 
more we rid ourselves of all that is bound up with 
selfishness and sensuality, the more do we under- 
stand what God would have us be and do. 
Sometimes after exhausting struggles for light 
there comes a sudden illumination. God seems 
to speak clearly, as Josephine Butler thought 
she heard Him speak during her great purity 
campaign. So, too, the Hebrew prophets thought 
they were His mouthpiece when they declared: 
“ Thus saith the Lord.’ It may be that in such 
cases God directly makes contact with manifest 
consciousness. But, just as some uprush 
from the unconscious mind gives to the 
mathematician after long search a solution of 
his problem, so it seems probable that divine 
influences received subconsciously are un- 
wittingly used to create the clear message of 
God. The really important fact, however, is 
that barriers, raised by evil lodged in the un- 
conscious mind, tend to exclude the influence 
of God. 

All great religious teachers have condemned 


THE MIND OF CHRIST 229 


certain types of action, because they have in- 
stinctively felt that they tended to set up barriers 
against those spiritual influences which enrich 
personality. Christ’s teaching is supreme, be- 
cause He so accurately diagnosed the sources of 
spiritual ill-health. He showed men how to 
destroy the barriers which shut out God; and 
I suggest that, in the light of modern psychology, 
we must regard Him as one in whom those 
barriers did not exist. Dr. Sanday, some dozen 
years ago, first put forward, I believe, this way 
of understanding Christ. Our Lord had, of 
course, human limitations, mental no less thaw 
physical; otherwise He could not have been man. 
But there was in Him a spiritual and moral 
perfection unintelligible save on the assumption 
that His mind was perfectly open to, and per- 
fectly responsive to, God. Now He would not 
have been truly man, for His knowledge would 
have been co-extensive with that of God, had 
His conscious mind been divine. But if there 
were nothing to separate His unconscious mind 
from the divine mind, the result of this perfect 
unity would have shown itself in exactly the 
kind of consciousness which all Christians believe 
Him to have had. Sanday’s suggestion has been 
attacked from many sides, but it is probably 
destined to have an important place in future 
Christological speculation. 


230 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


Questions raised by Christ’s moral perfection 
and supreme spiritual insight may become less 
difficult as we better understand the more general 
problem of sin and regeneration. All modern 
research goes to show that, if we let sin, false- 
hood, or ugliness lodge in the unconscious mind, 
our personality, the soul, will be harmed. It is 
now emphasized that we must not repress evil 
experiences; we must not try to forget or ignore 
them; we must destroy them by conscious en- 
deavour. The physician who seeks to heal a 
disordered mind helps the patient to effect such 
destruction. His methods are very similar to 
those of the wise priest in the confessional. Ido 
not, of course, allude to perfunctory confessions, 
but to those unburdenings of a tormented goul 
which ought to be great and rare occasions. This 
use of confession to physician or priest is of 
undoubted value. But if by the guidance of 
Christ we learn to know ourselves, there should 
be no need of human aid to help us to get divine 
grace. By prayer, by meditation, by that private 
recognition of sin which leads to abasement 
before God, we can without human aid destroy 
the effects of evil. We can thus prevent it from 
contaminating the hidden recesses of the mind. 
We can, in Christian language, get the sense of 
God’s forgiveness, the assurance that our sin 
is so far blotted out that we can still receive 


SUGGESTION 231 


the influence of His Spirit. “Lay bare your 
sins before Him, seek His pardon and love, 
and though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
become white as snow.” The old empirical 
teaching is fully confirmed by modern investiga- 
tion. 

Christians naturally wish to know whether 
modern psychology throws any new light on 
sacramental doctrines. How far does it confirm 
the Christian belief that there exist material 
channels of spiritual grace? All who are con- 
vinced that the Spirit of God is active among 
men will allow that His influence may come 
both directly to the human soul and indirectly. 
His indirect influence may be received through 
other human beings, who convey to us their 
spiritual experience. They may do this by 
explicit statement, or, and perhaps more 
effectively, by the process of suggestion. When 
suggestion operates, a bond of emotional 
sympathy is formed between different in- 
dividuals. There seems to be reason to hold 
that the bond is strongest when it is established 
unwittingly as a link between mental regions 
that are below the level of consciousness. It is 
well known that a crowd, at a period of excite- 
ment, will be set on fire by some common 
emotion. Words spoken by a leader may be 
such as normally would have little effect. But 


232 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


his unconscious mind somehow makes contact 
with the unconscious minds .of his hearers. 
A wave of emotion then runs through the crowd. 
The emotion sets up similar trains of thought 
in all present, and “a collective consciousness ” 
is established. The capacity of human beings 
to influence one another in this way, by com- 
municating emotions subliminally, is probably 
much more important than is generally recog- 
nized. Whether explicit ideas can be thus con- 
veyed is doubtful. It may be that what is 
conveyed is a vague feeling which, however, 
since men’s minds work with a general similarity, . 
leads to fairly uniform ideas. In view of man’s 
animal origin, we must regard this process of 
unwitting communication as of the same nature 
as that which makes a herd of animals act as 
one when danger threatens. We do not know 
yet whether in man the faculty has been de- 
veloped since he emerged from some ape-like 
stock, or whether it is in process of decay. 
Certain hypnotic experiments, however, seem 
to show that between individuals subliminal 
mental intercourse can be surprisingly complete. 
Many men of good judgment hold that telepathy, 
the communication of ideas without the use of 
material means such as speech or sight, is an 
established fact. If this be the case, it is prob- 
able that “thought reading” is effectively 


RELIGIOUS USE OF SUGGESTION 233 


limited to individuals whose mental develop- 
ment is exceptional, and that even with them 
success 1s by no means uniform. 

Though the collective consciousness of a 
crowd is usually on a lower moral level than 
that of the individuals who compose it, the 
influence of suggestion on a group of men and 
women can be used with great value to spread 
spiritual understanding. The associations of the 
building in which a group assembles, the appeal 
of hymns and music, the earnestness and 
possibly the fame of the leader, all combine to 
arouse collective devotion. The Divine Spirit 
then enters and enriches those present through 
channels which experiment has proved effective. 
Grace is thus conveyed sacramentally through 
human agency, and through material media 
which men have discovered to be of value. Alike 
the silence of a Quaker meeting and the noise of 
a Salvation Army band are effective means of 
sacramental grace. Some may be repelled by 
the thought that the same psychological processes 
which lead a Communist crowd to wreck a 
jeweller’s shop are at work in a devotional 
gathering. But, of course, the mechanism of 
the human mind, its susceptibility to suggestion, 
may be used well or ill. That the process of 
suggestion is rightly employed in religious 
worship is proved by the value which such 


234 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


worship has in strengthening character and 
developing spiritual insight. 

Great religious excitement may produce 
morbid mental states. Critics of “ revivals ” 
lay stress on “ hysterical outbursts” which are 
sometimes witnessed, and the belief is prevalent 
that such movements increase the number of 
those who need to be cared for in our lunatic 
asylums. It is doubtful whether statistics con- 
firm this belief. No one denies the existence 
of religious mania; but its origin almost certainly 
lies, not in true religious experience, but in some 
sin or shock which has led to morbid growths 
in the unconscious mind. The “ religious ” 
concomitants of the malady are accidental. 
Furthermore it must be remembered that a true 
revival calls sinners to repentance. The damage 
to the mind done by past sins and the effort to 
cleanse the mind from their corroding influences 
are factors sufficient to account for “ hysterical ” 
symptoms at conversion. Conversion does not 
always produce results of permanent value. 
But, in so far as the experience is not counterfeit 
and just so far as it is complete, it leads to that 
significant transformation which we term “ new- 
ness of life.” 

One danger is common to every religious use 
of the process of suggestion. Whenever de- 
votional fervour is quickened at some service of 


— -. f+ 


SUGGESTION AND BELIEF 230 


special significance—whether it be a revivalist 
meeting or a celebration of the Eucharist—the 
religious beliefs of those whose influence is 
dominant tend to be uncritically accepted by the 
rest. ‘The ordinary worshipper thus puts his 
religious experience in the mould provided for 
him. He accepts not merely the fact of the 
Spirit’s presence and influence, but also the 
interpretation of that fact which is offered to 
him. As a consequence, he is convinced that 
an unexamined system of doctrine is absolutely 
true. Thus it comes about that a belief in the 
infallibility of the Scriptures or in transubstan- 
tiation may be held with fanatical zeal. It 
cannot be too strongly emphasized that sound 
theology is the result of prolonged and patient 
intellectual enquiry. Beliefs have no valid 
basis when they are acquired by passive 
obedience to suggestion. Of course, only 
theologians can develop their science so as to 
preserve its harmony with the growth of human 
thought. But religious leaders and teachers 
of the people are gravely at fault if they ignore 
the results of theological study. By doing so 
they must inevitably produce the sort of an- 
tagonism between faith and knowledge which 
showed itself a generation ago in the so-called 
conflict between religion and science. 

Modern psychology, as we have previously 

17 


236 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


insisted, will not enable us to solve metaphysical 
problems, but it does show us how, by sug- 
gestion, men and women are led to assume that 
particular solutions of such problems are in- 
dubitably true. It is, unfortunately, not rare 
to hear from the pulpit that a particular 
view of the nature of the Christian sacraments 
is “proved by psychology.” Such a statement 
merely shows confusion of thought. For a 
magical or ex opere operato view of the Eucharist 
psychology affords no support. As a means of 
enriching spiritual life, those who come with 
faith to the Lord’s Supper find the service 
effective; their sense that Christ is always at 
hand to guide and help them is increased. 
Psychologists would point to the hallowed 
associations of the service with the Lord’s 
Passion. It uniquely links the worshipper to 
Him who said: ‘‘ Wherever two or three are 
gathered together in My name, there am I in the 
midst of them.” Love and hope and trust, 
triumphant over death; the intimate common 
meal of the Earthly Life; the broken Body and 
the outpoured Blood—all come before the mind. 
Before us is the outward sign of the invisible 
srace. Faith worksinus.... But psychology 
has nothing to say as to theories of the trans- 
formation of material substance into something 
other than itself. 


VALUATION OF FORMS OF WORSHIP 237 


All religious means of quickening spiritual 
life must be judged by their fruits. “ The fruit 
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, 
temperance.” Just in so far as these qualities 
show themselves naturally and, as it were, 
inevitably as the result of particular forms of 
worship, such forms (though not necessarily the 
theories associated with them) are justified. 
But when religious devotion produces intolerance, 
mental inertia, extravagant asceticism, or hypo- 
crisy in one of its many forms, it is psychologically 
harmful. In such cases there may be some 
measure of genuine spiritual insight, but it is 
incomplete. The study of primitive religion 
shows with what difficulty human worship has 
been separated from cruelty, lust, and supersti- 
tion. Even now magic dogs religion like an evil 
shadow. Tothe Hebrew prophets humanity owes 
an immense debt of gratitude for their efforts 
to free religion from evil associations. Christ 
accepted their work as the basis of His own revela- 
tion when He called men to enter His Father’s 
Kingdom, and there find spiritual health. 

What should be the result of such spiritual 
health? I ventured to say that the lethargic 
contentment of the fat monk who, remote from 
the storms of life, is happy in a round of liturgical 
services and humble duties—such is a parody of 


238 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 


spiritual peace. Not the obliteration of human 
instincts which may lead to sins, but their control, 
should be our ideal. St. Paul describes the 
religious life at its highest when he says, “ I beat 
down my body and bring it into subjection, lest I, 
when | have preached to others, myself should 
be a castaway.” We degenerate unless there is 
internal tension in our minds. The finest 
spiritual life is a life of ever-victorious conflict. 
When Christ comes to a man He brings, not peace, 
but a sword; not apathy or stagnation, but a 
constant struggle for newness of life. The 
antinomian who says, “I am saved; no evil 
that I may do can deprive me of God’s favour,” 
reveals that his mind is diseased. The saint, 
on the contrary, says: “I die daily. Every 
day I am in danger of the wrath of God. Every 
day, through His grace, I put on the Lord Jesus 
Christ.” One would think that such an approach 
to instability would be destructive of personal 
energy. Nothing could be farther from the 
truth. Spiritual tension is an amazing source of 
energy, as the lives of St. Paul, St. Catherine of 
Siena, John Wesley, General Booth, and count- 
less others reveal. 

Let me end with a quotation from Dr. Rivers,* 
one of our leading psychologists: 


* “Instinct and the Unconscious,” 1920, pp. 157, 158 
(condensed). 


ENERGY BY SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 239 


“Many lines of evidence are converging to 
show that all great accomplishment in human 
endeavour depends upon processes which go on 
outside those regions of the mind of the activity 
of which we are clearly conscious. There is 
reason to believe that the processes which underlie 
all great work in art, literature, or science take 
place unconsciously. ... Whence comes the 
energy of which this work is the expression ? 
Many pathological facts point to the conclusion 
that the energy so arising is increased in amount 
through the conflict between controlled and con- 
trolling forces. Whatever be its source, we do 
not know how high the goal that it may reach. 

“ Exceptional accomplishment seems to need a 
certain degree of instability in those subconscious 
strata of the mind which form the scene of the 
conflict between instinctive tendencies and the 
forces by which they are controlled. This in- 
stability under the conditions of war produced 
disease. Now that the struggle is over, we may 
expect it to be a source of energy from which 
should come great accomplishments in art and 
science. It may also be that, through this in- 
stability, new strength will be given to those 
movements which under the most varied guise 
express the deep craving for religion which seems 
to be universal among mankind.” 


Dr. Rivers writes objectively, unemotionally, 
asaman of science. God grant that the religious 
revival at which he hints may come in power 
among us. 


XI 


CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
By E. W. WATSON, D.D. 


“THE kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, 
which a woman took, and hid in three measures 
of meal, till it was all leavened.” This parable 
of our Lord is the best starting-point for a con- 
sideration of the effect which the Church and 
the Christian mode of thought of which the 
Church is the vehicle have produced upon the 
world. The point of the parable is the reciprocal 
relation of the two forces. Each works upon 
the other, and each is changed in the process. 
The woman does not drop her wedding-ring, 
or some other intractable substance, into the 
dough, but a material which is sensitive to its 
environment. And so we learn the lesson, which 
is confirmed by all experience, that Christianity 
does not work in isolation, and cannot, except as 
an Intellectual exercise, be contemplated apart 
from its relation to men and circumstances. 
Therefore, it cannot be judged apart from these, 
nor can we justly and reasonably say in regard 
to some particular combination of events that 
240 


CHRISTIANITY A LEAVEN 241 


Christianity has been a failure because things 
have turned out ill; nor, conversely, may we give 
the whole credit to Christianity, as distinguished 
from the general civilization of an age, when 
conspicuous graces of character and conduct 
have displayed themselves in Christian men. 
In either case, though not with equal rapidity 
or intensity, the leaven has been at work, and 
we must not allow ourselves to be disappointed 
or to think Christianity a failure if we can find 
occasions when its efficacy is not apparent, 
nor even if such an occasion thrusts itself upon 
our notice. It is not for us to be impatient 
or desponding; hope is one of the cardinal 
virtues. 

The thesis of this paper, then, is that there 
is no unconditioned Christianity; that in the 
providential order the faith must work with or 
against, as the case may be, the wills of men 
and the broader forces of history and human 
nature. This was evident in the very beginnings 
of our religion. We cannot assign limits to the 
thought of our Lord, but we may say that some- 
times He limited its expression so that it was 
intelligible to His generation. But His first 
disciples were encumbered by their hereditary 
Judaism. It was the meal which worked upon 
the leaven of the new doctrine, though it is 
needless to say that the leaven mastered it. 


242 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


The point is that there was a conflict between 
the two, and that the faith which shaped itself 
was the resultant of the two forces. So also 
was the character and conduct that developed 
among Christians, though here the victory of 
the new leaven has been less conspicuous. 

Let us compare the first Christians, mis- 
sionaries as earnest as have ever lived, with 
those who have advocated the same cause in 
later days. They were not professional advo- 
cates, and therefore probably they were the 
more eflective. But, being amateurs, if the 
term may be used, they had no special training; 
they spoke from inward conviction, but with 
nothing to separate their mode of thought, except 
in the one essential respect and in its implications, 
from that of the society around them. Our 
modern missionaries have the advantage, which 
is also a disadvantage, of appearing to primitive 
races as the representatives and teachers of a 
higher civilization. They have medicine and 
education, and many other desirable things to 
offer. They are above the level of those whom 
they strive to win. Or, again, they may be 
offering their faith to alien races which possess 
ancient creeds and philosophies of which they 
are proud. In this case they are outside the 
society they are trying to convert. The first 
teachers of Christianity were within the society 


2 
ee 


THE INFLUENCE OF THE AGE 243 


of their time, and shared its ignorances, its pre- 
Judices, and some of its vices. A Cambridge 
scholar, Dr. H. F. Stewart,* makes the striking 
assertion that “lying was never an ecclesiastical 
offence, and rigid veracity cannot be claimed as a 
constant characteristic of any Christian writer 
of the period, except Athanasius, Augustine, 
and (outside his panegyrics) Husebius of 
Cesarea.”’ Some students might make reserves 
in the case of one or other of these great names. 
But, speaking generally, there is no reason to 
think that the Christians had surpassed the 
standard of the world in which they lived. For 
all that, their Christianity was not a failure. 
Nor does the relentlessness which they shared 
with their age condemn them; it was a phase 
which they had not outgrown. It was natural 
enough for them to take it as an obligation upon 
Christians that they should hate their adver- 
saries as the Psalmist hated his, and any qualms 
of pity were rejected as unworthy of men who 
were called to follow the example of the man 
after God’s own heart. Here, and in many other 
respects, the absolute acceptance of the whole 
Scripture as equally inspired and equally bind- 
ing on Christians worked sad results. There is 
a striking passage in a homily of St. Hilary of 
Poitiers, a younger contemporary of Athanasius 
* “Cambridge Medieval History,” vol. i, p. 571. 


244 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


and the chief exponent in the Latin tongue of 
Nicene orthodoxy, in which he enforces our 
Lord’s command not to return evil for evil by 
the consideration that the Christian who does 
so will spoil the completeness of God’s vengeance. 
When we think of the bitterness with which 
doctrinal conflicts were waged, we must bear 
in mind that Christian hearts had been hardened 
by almost three centuries of persecution, and 
had learned to regard any adversary as also the 
adversary of God. We see controversy at its 
worst when calumny is used as a weapon. It 
was used on the orthodox side as well as on 
the heretical. But here, again, we find that 
the customs of the old world were too deeply 
rooted to be purged out by the new spirit of 
Christianity. The least attractive aspect of 
the great classical orators is their invective; 
we see it at its worst in the insults of Demos- 
thenes towards the mother of his rival. Now 
all ancient education was rhetorical, and the art 
of insolence was regularly taught and practised 
in the schools. Every educated Christian author 
was a rhetorician, and used the weapons of his 
craft. When we find him bespattering an 
opponent, we need not suppose that he meant 
more than that he heartily disapproved his 
doctrine; nor need we suppose that the readers, 
who knew the rules of the rhetorical game and 


THE OLD CIVILIZATION 245 


expected to see them dexterously employed, 
would take these assaults as meant for literal 
truth. Our modern Church historians have 
often been too credulous of charges against the 
character of erroneous teachers; not that, like 
some of their predecessors, they have taken 
pleasure in tracing a connection between false- 
hood of doctrine and depravity of life. 

In these and in other ways we see that the 
old civilization retained its grip on the adherents 
of the new faith. They adapted it to their 
creed; they also adapted their creed to it. They 
had to work with the same set of general ideas 
as their pagan compeers. And in some respects 
it was an age of decadence. If it was one of 
progress in ethics and in the science of law, depart- 
ments of thought in which, as Dean Inge has 
told us, the Christians were disciples in the school 
of their time, and learned lessons which they 
have handed on to us, it was an age of decline 
in the physical sciences. The great compilation 
of Pliny, which garnered the knowledge and the 
ignorance and superstition of the period, offers 
a sad contrast to the intelligence of Aristotle 
The Christians had to bear the load of the 
credulity which was common to themselves and 
their contemporaries, and some of its effects 
upon religious thought have been permanent. 
But it was their environment, not their 


246 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


Christianity, that was at fault. The faith, then 
as little as now, was working in vacuo ; it was 
conditioned by circumstances. It is vain, there- 
fore, to look to the early Christians without 
reserve as patterns to be followed. To do so 
would be to accept one of the strangest of 
fallacies which they shared with their time. It 
was that of a golden age in the past. It was 
not merely a poetical imagination, it was a 
reasoned philosophy of nature, that mankind, 
like the whole universe, is deteriorating and near 
its end. All evolution (for they had the idea) 
was by way of degeneration. The notion found 
its classical expression in Horace: 


‘* Aitas parentum peior avis tulit 
Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
Progeniem vitiosiorem.”’ 


The Christians, too, held that the remoter the 
past, the healthier, the more virtuous, the wiser, 
were those who lived in it. St. Cyprian pointed 
to children born with the white hair of age as 
evidence of the decrepitude of the race, and 
this doctrine of degeneracy fitted well with 
the Christian and Jewish expectation of an 
approaching end of the world. Wisdom, then, 
was not garnered by experience, but was a 
primal gift, and Moses, the original recipient 
of the true revelation, must therefore be the 


DEGENERATION 247 


earliest of sages. ‘‘ What,” said a critic quoted 
by Clement of Alexandria, “is Plato but Moses 
talking Attic ?’’ Whatever truth he possessed 
must have been borrowed, and distorted in 
transmission, from the virgin source. Reasoning 
so grotesque worked sad havoc in Christian 
minds. We are not concerned here with its 
effects, but with its cause. It was not specifically 
Christian; it was part of the common heritage 
of the time, and is part of the evidence for the 
fact that the Christian faith was but one element, 
though the strongest, in the furniture of their 
mind. 

It was a more serious matter that in two 
most important regions of thought, those ot 
philosophy and of law, the Christians moulded 
their mind after the current pattern. ‘The 
educated among them could not escape the 
influence of the higher thought of their age. 
Christian speculation on the supreme topics of 
theology was guided by the philosophy of the 
time, as is most strikingly shown in St. Augus- 
tine’s use of the very language of Plotinus, 
the neo-Platonist, to express his own most 
intimate convictions after his conversion. And 
so it was with legal thought. Christian order 
followed the majestic system of Rome. To take 
only its discipline, omitting the administration 
which was borrowed from the imperial system, 


248 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


canon law is the twin of civil law. Both are 
descended from the old Roman jurisprudence, 
and show it in their assumption of the guilt of 
a person criminally charged and in their demand 
that he should answer questions of the court 
that might inculpate him—a method that excited 
deep repugnance in English minds, whether it 
were practised in ecclesiastical courts in ac- 
cordance with the canon law or in the Star 
Chamber in accordance with the civil. We have 
anticipated the course of history, but the case 
shows how religious discipline has been affected 
by secular; and the converse is equally true. 
For instance, our English law of trusts, as 
interpreted in Chancery, was worked out on 
ecclesiastical principles by a Bishop of Salisbury, 
who was also Master of the Rolls under 
Richard IT. 

To return to the consecutive proof of our 
thesis that Christianity never has been, nor can 
be, a force working in isolation, let us consider 
its state when it began to dominate the world. 
The age was one of intellectual decline, in which 
men lost all sense of probability. The early 
monks of Egypt, where the institution began, 
lived in a world of unrealities, which obfuscated 
minds that yet were profoundly Christian. 
When we read the very entertaining record of the 
miracles which befell them, we are not for a 


MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 249 


moment tempted to ignore their deep faith and 
keen spiritual insight, but we are inevitably 
reminded of the equally improbable stories with 
which religionists of an older creed regaled 
Herodotus by the banks of the same river. 
Pagans and Christians had been victims of an 
equal credulity, or perhaps both had found an 
equal and an equally innocent pleasure in 
mystifying the credulous admirer. In any case, 
from the expansion of monasticism, or at any 
rate from the time of that expansion, there dates 
an increasing feebleness of human intelligence. 
Strong and shrewd though he was, the writings 
of Gregory the Great are an unrivalled treasury 
of superstition and folklore, though it must be 
added that St. Augustine himself had not been 
immune from the infection. From this time 
onward the Christian faith was to labour under 
a burden which it had not imposed upon itself, 
and it cannot be blamed for errors which its 
adherents were unable to reject. They were 
men of their time. And not only was their 
mental, and to some extent moral, state inevit- 
able. It was a phase through which Christianity 
was designed to pass, and reaction from it was 
the necessary method of progress. But within 
this range of ideas—cramping, as 1t seems to us— 
the faith did, in fact, work some of its most 
striking victories, and types of Christian character 


200 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


were developed which could not have developed 
in other surroundings. St. Louis and St. Francis 
were what they were in great measure because 
of their environment; it suited them, just as the 
quaint French of Joinville and the picturesque 
compromise between Latin and Italian of the 
“ Canticle of Brother Sun ” suited the thoughts 
and adventures they were used to describe. 

So we might continue through successive 
centuries, always finding that Christianity is 
conditioned by circumstances, and that even 
when earnest people have striven to cultivate it 
in isolation their environment has broken in and 
spoiled the experiment. This has equally been 
the case when, as in the monasteries, worldly 
cares and temptations have distracted the mind 
from the purpose for which they were founded, 
and when, without the searching test of endow- 
ment, select companies have failed to maintain 
their strictness of life and doctrine. Their 
Christianity has not been at fault, even though 
we might find some inadequacy in it; the cause 
lies in the inseparable combination of Christianity 
with other forces, each acting upon the rest. 
Sometimes it is a Mezentian union; sometimes, 
on the other hand, if only for a while, there have 
been most inspiring illustrations of what 
Christianity at its best can achieve. But always 
in the providential order, whether for help or for 


THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 251 


hindrance, the surrounding world has worked 
in and on Christian souls and the Christian 
society. 

Has this operation been progressive? The 
comfortable doctrine of continuous progress 
has received of late shrewd blows, philosophical 
and practical. As Christians, we are not pledged 
to assume that, within our narrow horizon, 
progress can be clearly observed; for us the 
world is in the hands of one for whom a thousand 
years are but a day, and the cumulative evidence 
of the power of the Christian faith on personal 
character and on the conduct of masses of men 
is among the proofs of our faith. The effects 
repeat themselves in successive generations and 
among all races, and are strikingly uniform. 
It does not matter that interspersed among these 
phenomena are facts of a contrary kind—in- 
dividual souls over which their faith exercises 
no control, or a control that is intermittent. 
This does not prove that Christianity is a failure, 
but that it has not had a fair trial. And in the 
wider sphere of religious and national life it is 
not that Christianity has too often broken down, 
but rather that it has not been fully or genuinely 
applied. In fact, the course of Christianity may 
be likened to a procession of waves in which the 
crest 1s followed by the trough; or rather, as in 


a troubled sea, there is a simultaneous action of 
18 


252 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


waves in every stage of rise and fall. National 
apostasy may be accomplished amid the silent 
protest of a wide and deep personal religion, 
and an effective maintenance of Christian causes 
may coincide with a low standard of Christian 
life in the nation which is their champion. 

But there is not a simple succession of phases. 
There is a continuous change by way of reaction. 
It is one of Cardinal Newman’s charges against 
the Church of England that this has been its 
history. It is perfectly true, and quite credit- 
able. The somewhat violent spirit of our early 
reformers was a healthy revulsion from decadent 
medievalism, and each change of religious 
temper that has followed has had the same 
origin, nor need we think that the process has 
reached its end. We shall, indeed, be very 
unwise if we pin our trust to the permanence of 
our present modes of religious thought and 
religious expression. There is the same in- 
evitable change in the wider sphere of national 
tendencies. Some generations have greater 
powers of religious apprehension than others, — 
and it seems a safe generalization to say that 
days of great action have not been days of deep 
religious feeling. In few periods has religion 
in England been less conspicuously effective 
than in those of the Black Prince, the elder Pitt, 
and the Duke of Wellington, nor need we be 


PHASES OF THOUGHT 203 


unduly depressed that our own should resemble 
theirs in both respects. 

But we have not to consider only objective 
facts. In all impressions concerning the state 
of religion and character there is a strong 
subjective element. With perfect sincerity 
people exaggerate, and the picture is too bright 
or too dark to be true. There never was a more 
admirable woman than Hannah More, but what 
are we to think of her assertion that when she 
settled at Cheddar there was but one Bible to 
be found in a cottage, and it served to prop a 
geranium-pot ? The Methodist movement had 
been in full blast for two generations, and no- 
where with more energy than in Somersetshire. 
Can we believe Miss More’s account of its failure ? 
It is conceivable, though most unlikely, that the 
movement had spent itself and provoked a 
reaction to indifference. It is more probable 
that the lady’s sense of disappointment at some 
failure of her own efforts had persuaded her 
that things were worse than they really were. 
But such despondency is a frequent phenomenon. 
Bishop Butler’s grave preface to the “ Analogy,”’ 
written in 1736, is well known: “ It is come, I 
know not how, to be taken for granted, by many 
persons, that Christianity is not so much as a 
subject of enquiry; but that it is, now at length, 
discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly 


254 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


they treat it as if, in the present age, this were 
an agreed point among all people of discernment; 
and nothing remained, but to set it up as a 
principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were 
by way of reprisals for its having so long inter- 
rupted the pleasures of the world.” Of Scotland 
in the next generation, that of David Hume, 
Professor Hume Brown has bluntly told us that 
religion was dead there. These were subjective 
impressions, destined to be quickly falsified. 
There was neither more nor less truth in them 
than in the exaggerated cheerfulness of other 
generations. We are now labouring under the 
reaction from an unbalanced optimism. Matthew 
Arnold exclaimed, in scorn of mid-Victorian 
sentiment: 


** As if the world had ever had 
A faith, or sciolists been sad.” 


Our sciolists are never cheerful. But it must be 
admitted that serious people, too, have mis- 
calculated in their hopes, and suffered the 
penalty in depression. In regard to the Church 
of England, this was the case about 1885, when 
the establishment in Wales was first attacked. 
There arose a chorus of self-gratulation, in 
which, it must be said, Archbishop Benson was 
a leader. We were accused of inefficiency, of 
failure to attract and influence the multitude. 


FAILURE ONLY APPARENT — 255 


In reply, we praised ourselves lustily; never was 
a Church so beneficently active, so spiritual, 
in the best sense so successful. We forgot that 
we had some dull preachers, some empty 
churches. We are suffering still from the reaction 
against this exaggeration; we are perhaps too 
conscious of failures, and pay undue attention 
to the fact that some methods of appeal are 
outworn, while failing to notice that others are 
taking their place. It is, for instance, psycho- 
logically intelligible that mission preaching, 
which produced wonderful results in the heroic 
days of Aitken and Twigg, is now much less 
effectual, in spite of (perhaps in part because of) 
great improvements in technique. 

Some of the illustrations that have been used 
may perhaps seem narrowly ecclesiastical, but 
they will serve to point the moral as well as if 
they had been chosen from a wider range. The 
problem before us is an apparent failure of 
Christianity. We have tried first to satisfy 
ourselves that Christianity neither fails nor 
succeeds in a broad sense apart from the world 
which it is set to influence. To use a further 
illustration, as planets control each other’s course, 
so it is with Church and world. But the in- 
fluence exerted is not uniform; there are re- 
current periods of advance and retreat. This is 
the case when the facts are objectively con- 


256 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 


sidered; it is still more obvious when mental 
states are taken into account. The contempla- 
tion of the whole world order is an exercise for 
our faith, and, indeed, a trial. But we may see 
in it a proof of Divine patience and wisdom, 
and if we try to conform our will to the Will that 
is supreme, we may hope not only to strengthen 
our assurance, but to bring nearer the fulfilment 
of God’s purpose for His creation. 


a a a a 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND 8ONS8, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER, 


THE RECONSTRUCTION OF BELIEF 


BELIEF IN GOD 


By CHARLES GORE, D.D. 


Formerly Bishop of Oxford 


This Volume—which is to be followed by two others entitled 
‘* Belief in Christ ’’ and ‘* The Holy Spirit and the Church,”’ 


each volume, however, being independent of the others—is an attempt 
to construct a rational fabric of belief from the foundation, as far as may 
be, without assumptions. Accordingly, after an introductory chapter 
in which the breakdown of traditional belief is noted and its causes 
analysed, the author proceeds to enquire afresh what are the grounds, 
first, for any sort of belief in God and, secondly, for belief in a specific 
revelation such as Christianity postulates. The idea of God resulting 
from this enquiry is thus analysed and tested, the question of the 
credibility of the miraculous being considered at length. The book, 
which represents a lifetime of study and thought, necessarily traverses 
the area of all the most fundamental modern controversies, but the 
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CONTENTS.—The Breakdown of Tradition—The Conditions of 
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